Gunmen attack Kurdish police officer’s house, abduct youth in Kirkuk

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Separate unidentified armed groups attacked an officer’s house in northern suburb of Kirkuk and abducted a Kurdish youth just south of the province, police said on Saturday.

In the first incident, unknown assailants opened fire on the house of a Kurdish officer of the Kirkuk police after throwing a bomb inside the garden of his home, a police source told Kurdistan 24.

The attack took place late on Friday in the predominantly Kurdish north Kirkuk neighborhood of Rahimawa. There were no casualties, but the front of the house sustained damage, according to the source.

So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, similar to the others carried out in the province, over the past few months.

In the second incident on Friday, unknown gunmen abducted a young male Kurdish resident of unspecified age from a village near Tuz Khurmatu (Khurmatu), south of Kirkuk, and took him to an unknown location, according to a local news agency who cited a source in the security forces.

Security in the oil-rich and ethnically diverse province of Kirkuk has largely declined since Iraqi forces and forces from the Hashd al-Shaabi, comprised largely of Iran-backed Shia militias, attacked and took over the area from Kurdish Peshmerga forces on Oct. 16 last year.

Kirkuk is a disputed territory between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi Federal Government. It was under the protection of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces since 2014, until they were pushed from the province in the October military operation. 

Kirkuk is a diverse province consisting of groups including Turkmen, Arabs, Christians, and a Kurdish majority. The oil-rich province was under the administration of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from 2014 until Oct. 2017.  This ended after the area, along with other disputed territories, was included in the Kurdistan Region’s Sep. 25 referendum on independence, which saw 93 percent of voters favoring statehood, and which resulted in an immediate crisis between the federal government and the Kurdistan Region.

Following the Oct. 16 attack by Iraqi forces and the Hashd al-Shaabi, also known as Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), over 180,000 people, mostly Kurds, fled from the disputed territories to other cities in the Kurdistan Region, fearing violent retribution and other violations at the hands of the militia groups. Hundreds of houses, shops, and properties in Khurmatu have been burnt or destroyed, and the security situation has deteriorated considerably.