We present a moderately-deep JK photometry for three selected areas of the dwarf irregular galaxy IC 1613 .
The color-magnitude diagrams contain a mixture of red supergiants , asymptotic giant branch stars and the brightest red giant stars .
The red supergiants are massive ( 20 - 25 \cal M _ { \odot } ) and young — with ages between 8 and 25 Myr .
The most important result is the evidence of the decreasing density of the intermediate age AGB population in the vicinity of the HII regions in the galaxy .
We also find age differences between AGB stars in the main body of the galaxy and those near the HII regions in the North-East .
The former span a range in ages between 1 and 10 Gyr , while the latter are younger than 1 Gyr .
Using the period-luminosity relation derived by Madore & Freedman ( 1991 ) and JK magnitudes of the Cepheid variable V20 , we calculated ( m - M ) _ { K } = 24.37 \pm 0.2 .
The recently discovered Nova ( King et al .
1999 ) was identified in Field III .
Its presence of our images and its brightness questioned its classification as a nova .