Five-year-old Ali waits to be screened at the Dibis checkpoint northwest Kirkuk after fleeing ISIS-held Hawijah last month.

A bomb blast on Friday killed 12 civilians, among them women and children, who had fled the ISIS-held Hawijah area in northern Iraq, officials said.

The deaths highlight the extreme danger faced by civilians trying to flee areas held by ISIS, who may be targeted by the extremists as they seek to escape and then have to navigate bombs the militants have planted.

Hawijah is a town in Iraq’s Kirkuk province that was seized by ISIS along with swathes of other territory in the summer of 2014.

Police Colonel Fatah Hassan said the displaced Iraqis had left the Hawijah area on foot but were picked up by police who were transporting them to the west when the bomb ripped through the vehicle.

Hassan, a police lieutenant colonel and Iraqi lawmaker Mohammed Tamim all confirmed that 12 displaced Iraqis were killed. He added that one of the policemen trying to help them was also killed, while both police and displaced civilians were wounded.

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