KIRKUK, Iraq (AFP) — Islamic State group jihadists said Sunday they had carried out an attack in northern Iraq killing nine police officers, setting off a roadside bomb before machine-gunning survivors.

The attack in the Kirkuk area — which police said left nine federal officers dead — is one of the deadliest in Iraq in recent months.

IS fighters attacked "a police patrol… detonated an explosive device then attacked them with machine guns and hand grenades," the group said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

A federal police officer, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the bomb blast hit a vehicle transporting members of Iraq's federal police near the village of Shalal al-Matar.

It was then followed by "a direct attack with small arms," the officer added.

"An assailant has been killed, and we are looking for the others," the officer said.

IS jihadists seized large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014, declaring a "caliphate" where they ruled with brutality before their defeat in late 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by a US-led military coalition.

IS lost its last Syrian bastion, near the Iraqi border, in 2019.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani condemned the violence as a "cowardly terrorist attack."

Security forces should show "vigilance, carefully inspect the roads and not provide any opportunity for terrorist elements," he said.