By Ahmed Qassim

NINEVEH, Iraq 

Security forces killed 17 Daesh terrorists west of Mosul, regional capital of Iraq’s northern Nineveh province, a military source said Thursday.

“Shortly after midnight Wednesday, three vehicles transporting 17 gunmen intercepted an Iraqi military convoy in the Badush area west of Mosul,” Army Major Abdul-Khaliq al-Bahadli told Anadolu Agency.

According to al-Bahadli, all 17 gunmen were killed in a half-hour-long firefight that erupted immediately afterward between the two sides.

Three security personnel, he said, had been injured in the exchange.

The army officer went on to assert that “hundreds” of Daesh terrorists remain holed up in and around Nineveh’s Badush area.

Recent months have seen Daesh’s presence in the country vastly eroded -- thanks to the Iraqi army and a U.S.-led military coalition -- after the terrorist group overran much of northern and western Iraq in 2014.

Iraqi military officials, however, continue to warn of numerous Daesh “sleeper cells”, which they say are still active in the country.