VIDEO: ISIS kills 4 youths, injures 3 in Kurdish village outside Kirkuk
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Islamic State militants attacked a residential home in a village located to the west of the disputed city of Kirkuk late Tuesday night, killing four youths and injuring several others.
The attack targetted civilians in the Kurdish majority village of Chaghmagha in Dibis district.
“From the beginning of the ISIS attack, residents of the Kurdish village of Chaghmagha defended themselves, leading to clashes between the terrorist group’s militants and the people,” said a Kurdistan 24 correspondent at the scene who had spoken to several villagers.
Following the attack, Iraqi security forces arrived, leading the assailants to flee in the direction of the one-time Islamic State stronghold of Hawija.
Even since Hawija’s liberation from the extremist organization, it continues to witness a high level of lawlessness, including insurgency attacks, ambushes, and kidnappings.
Video footage taken from a nearby security camera shows what appears to be an Islamic State gunman sneaking up to the house and beginning to shoot through the window.
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani extended his condolences to the families of the victims in a statement later that day and wished those injured a speedy recovery.
“This incident is one of many in which the terrorist group ISIS takes advantage of the security gaps to re-organize themselves and attack,” the statement read, adding that “terrorist attacks against the people must not be taken lightly. This is why it is important to further strengthen coordination between the Kurdistan Region and Iraq to eliminate the threat of terrorism and end this unnatural security situation in these areas that has become the way things are.”
On Monday, security forces (Asayish) in the Kurdistan Region’s Garmyan Administration discovered an underground tunnel used by an unspecified armed group, freeing three individuals imprisoned inside and arresting at least some of those responsible for their abduction.
Read More: Kurdistan security frees 3 abductees chained underground for 11 days
“After gaining intelligence about a tunnel in Sarqala sub-district in the district of Kifri, we approached the area and were able to arrest several suspects and find three individuals chained inside the tunnel that had been reported missing,” read a statement by a security spokesperson.
KRG officials have repeatedly warned that the security vacuum in and around territory disputed by Baghdad and Erbil created by the lack of coordination between Kurdish and Iraqi forces offers extremist fighters the opportunity to regroup and stage regular attacks in nearby populated areas.
From their hideouts in bleak and inhospitable parts of the country, the terror group’s sleeper cells have planned and launched a series of attacks on security forces in Nineveh, Anbar, Salahuddin, Diyala, and Kirkuk provinces.
Editing by John J. Catherine