...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....
(ISIS) attacks in Diyala province on Sunday, according to the Iraqi Defense Ministry.
The ministry’s Security Media Cell said two soldiers from the army’s 5th Division were killed and another maimed when
On the same day, ISIS
ISIS has not publicly taken responsibility for the attacks.
Diyala has seen a serious uptick in ISIS activity as
Remnants of the jihadist group have exploited the security vacuum between Iraqi and Peshmerga lines to resurge following their territorial defeat in Iraq in December 2017.
| Outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi received a phone call on Monday from US Defense Secretary Mark Esper. They discussed the ongoing fight against ISIS and the security and stability in Iraq. |
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
, Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
and Saladin, including bombings, mortar attacks, shootings, and death threats.
Resolving the disputed status of these frontier areas and bolstering security cooperation between Iraqi and Kurdish forces is widely seen as the means of preventing the ISIS resurgence.
The Kurdistan Region’s 2017 independence referendum led to a major dispute between the Iraqi government and the semiautonomous Kurdistan Region over who should control the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and other disputed areas of Diyala and Nineveh.
The dispute escalated into an Iraqi offensive against the Peshmerga. The Kurdish force, which had defended several of these areas from ISIS since 2014, withdrew to the federally recognized Kurdistan Region and some formerly ISIS-controlled areas of Nineveh, Kirkuk, and Diyala.
With both sides keen to avoid direct conflict, but unwilling to cooperation on security, a vast ungoverned space has been left for ISIS to regroup.
Outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi received a phone call on Monday from US Defense Secretary Mark Esper. They discussed the ongoing fight against ISIS and the security and stability in Iraq.
Multiple Peshmerga brigades and Garmiyan Asayesh forces were involved in a raid south of the town of Kolajo, Diyala province on Sunday, arresting ten armed ISIS suspects who had disguised themselves as farmers.