Baghdad, Aug 5 (IANS): At least six Islamic State (IS) militants were killed on Sunday in an airstrike by US-led coalition in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, the Iraqi military said.

Acting on intelligence reports provided by Nineveh's Operations Command, an Iraqi army force tracked a group of IS militants and surrounded them outside an abandoned village near the town of Makhmour, some 70 km southeast of Mosul, the media office of the Joint Operations Command said in a brief statement, Xinhua reported.

The troops coordinated with the international coalition aircraft and conducted an airstrike on the spot, leaving six militant killed, the statement said.

Afterwards, the troops searched the bombed site and found the six bodies with four assault rifles, the statement added.

The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017.

IS remnants, however, have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas as safe havens, carrying out frequent guerrilla attacks against security forces and civilians.