It was Saturday that al-Islahs met with a strange sight: two bomb-blasted cows wandering around the village's northern side. The animals moved toward the outskirts of the village and when they reached some buildings, the bombs were fired with remote control, according to The New York Times.

Both cows were killed and houses damaged but no people were affected, according to Colonel Ghalib al-Atyia, a police spokesman in Diyala province.

According to his assessment, the attack points to the fact that IS, which has suffered major losses during the war of the past years, is now being forced into more unconventional tactics to compensate for its losses. At the same time, military efforts are being carried out to deploy IS in nearby areas north of the capital Baghdad.

Several explanations

A second explanation is that jihadists are simply hiding bombs in all possible places to create increased concern and uncertainty. It can also be a way to send a signal to the villagers that they are in the area and that may still threaten the village, which is close to several major roads, Colonel al-Atyia tells the American newspaper.

- The Islamic State will continue to try to enter the areas that it sees as strategically important in order to move.

The incident has also attracted attention in local media, and Kurdish NRT has reported on the incident with a picture of the destruction. Northeast Diyala province has been hit hard by IS in the past year and some of the attacks have hit just the village of al-Islah.

Not unique

Using animals in this way stands out, but it is actually not unique, either in war or in jihadist attacks.

Afghan Taliban have used bombs attached to donkeys. It also has al-Qaeda in Iraq - IS's forerunner during the Iraq war when it was also common for dead animals to be used to hide bombs.

Palestinian groups have repeatedly used animal bombs, prompting the Peta animal rights group to write to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2003 with a call to keep animals out of the Middle East conflict.

But animals have always been used in war. During the Second World War, both the United States and Soviet tested animals as a bomb method, in the US case including bats and birds, while the Soviet Union tried on minored dogs for tanks.