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Iraq says six killed in Islamic State group attack
[Rudaw] Three teenagers and three coppers were rubbed out in northern Iraq Monday as they put out a crop fire, an attack that officials blamed on Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group jihadists. The six were shot full of holes in the Taza Khurmatu district south of the city of Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... said Hussein Adel, the local adminstration head, adding that a seventh person, a civilian, was also missing. After the killings, a police car arriving in the area came under fire, and a bomb was also went kaboom!. "IS set fire to farmland," Adel said. "When police and civilians came to put out the fire, they were attacked by IS elements, who killed three coppers and three teenagers." Iraq announced victory against IS in late 2017 after three years of ferocious fighting backed by paramilitary forces and the US-led air coalition. But IS cells still carry out hit-and-run attacks, particularly in vast desert regions of northern and western Iraq near the mostly non-existent border with Syria. In recent years, they have torched swathes of fields in Iraq and Syria, boasting about the destruction in their propaganda. In 2019, more than 200 fires burned down some 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of crops in northern Iraq, with some of the blazes blamed on jihadists, and others on land disputes. After three years of biting drought that has slashed cultivatable areas by half, Iraq is closely monitoring its wheat harvest this year. The IS group has " maintained the ability to launch attacks at a steady rate in Iraq, including hit-and-run operations, ambushes and roadside kabooms", a UN report said in January. "Exploiting the mostly non-existent border" between Iraq and Syria, the jihadist group still has "between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters across both countries, where it is forming cells and training operatives to launch attacks". Cells "remain active in desert and rural territories, and the group uses urban areas to expand its clandestine networks", it added. In April, two soldiers were killed by a jacket wallah during a counter-terrorism operation in an area north of the capital Baghdad. Posted by: trailing wife 2022-05-24 |
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