Peshmerga commander: 5 Coalition airstrikes target ISIS positions southwest of Erbil

Smoke rises after a previous Coalition airstrike on Mount Qarachukh that targeted Islamic State positions, Jun. 25, 2020. (Photo: Social Media/Sirwan Barzani)
Smoke rises after a previous Coalition airstrike on Mount Qarachukh that targeted Islamic State positions, Jun. 25, 2020. (Photo: Social Media/Sirwan Barzani)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A top Peshmerga commander announced on Wednesday that warplanes of the US-led Coalition struck five Islamic State positions within a disputed rural territory, southwest of the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Erbil.

Sirwan Barzani, a senior Peshmerga commander in the area, said that, over the past 72 hours, the strikes were carried out near Mount Qarachukh, a rural area outside Makhmour that has witnessed a steady amount of Islamic State activity in recent months.

The airstrikes resulted in “a number of causalities” among the militants, the commander claimed, adding that a makeshift storage area used by the extremist group was destroyed as well.  

Notably, the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga ministry issued a statement earlier in the day, warning that “Intelligence reports emphasize that Da’esh [the Islamic State] intends to carry out terrorist attacks in these areas [Makhmour and Mount Qarachukh],” causing regional military leaders to order Peshmerga units “on alert” across the autonomous region of Iraq.

Read More: No ‘irregular deployment’ made against Iraqi forces: Peshmerga

The ministry has routinely warned of the ongoing and significant threat of Islamic State militants operating with impunity in Iraq’s disputed territories, where a security vacuum exists in areas between those under the control of either Peshmerga or federal Iraqi forces.

The disputed territories are a large swath of area that is claimed by both the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government.

Since Peshmerga were pushed from the territories by Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces as part of Baghdad’s hostile response to the Kurdistan Region’s 2017 independence referendum, the Islamic State has exploited such security lapses to launch multiple attacks.

In neighboring Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on Tuesday that it had arrested four suspected Islamic State members in Deir al-Zor and Hasakah provinces in separate operations this week.

Read More: Kurdish-led SDF arrests 4 ISIS suspects in eastern Syria with Coalition support

“The captured terrorists are responsible for supplying and transporting weapons and money,” the SDF said.

Editing by John J. Catherine