Islamic State kidnaps 30 tribesmen, kills seven

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An Islamic State (IS) sleeper-cell abducted 30 people from a tribe and killed seven of them in Iraq’s Salahuddin Province.

Head of al-Dour’s District Council Ali Hassan told Iraqi media that IS kidnaped 30 members of the Shammar tribe in Salahuddin. He said they found seven of the bodies, but the fate of the rest is unknown.

Hassan asked the Iraqi government to take the necessary steps to save the victims.

Recently, remnant IS fighters have been intensifying operations in territories disputed between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region as the quality of security has declined.

According to a Kurdish lawmaker in the Iraqi Parliament, Shakhawan Abdulla, the root of the problem is the inability of locals to participate in the protection of their lands.

Iraqi forces and the Iranian-backed Shia Hashd al-Shaabi militias took over the contested territories from Peshmerga in a military operation on Oct. 16.

“What we have after the events of Oct. 16 are security failures and unreliability,” Abdulla said about Iraqi forces in an interview with Kurdistan 24.

In Diyala Province on Monday, located east of Salahuddin, IS extremists kidnaped another seven people and killed two others at a fake checkpoint the terrorists had erected.

Iraqi security forces are currently investigating the case in an attempt to address growing concerns of the risks of remaining in those territories. Some families, however, have left the province after persistent attacks from IS and fears that their safety was in danger.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany