...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) attack in Diyala province, a police source said on Sunday.
Haytham al-Shammari, spokesperson for Diyala police, told Rudaw that four ISIS fighters in a white Kia truck
…oh dear. Everyone knows that the proper jihadi drives a white Toyota truck not that down-market Kia thing (not that I am judging, mind you, but people do talk, donchaknow)…
opened fire around 9:30 pm on Saturday at a base of security forces in the province’s Muqdadiya district (known as Sharaban in Kurdish), killing two. "The truck driver was killed and other [ISIS] fighters escaped the scene," Shammari said.
In December, a deadly ISIS attack in the same district killed 10 civilians and 17 injured.
ISIS rose to power and seized control of swathes of Iraqi territory during a brazen offensive in 2014 but was declared territorially defeated in 2017 when its so-called caliphate in the country fell as Iraqi and Kurdish fighters, supported by a US-led international coalition, claimed back lands lost to the jihadists.
Despite its territorial defeat, the group has continued to pose a serious security threat to the country through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions in several provinces, particularly in areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad which stretch across the provinces of Salahaddin, Diyala, Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
and Nineveh.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces frequently launch anti-ISIS operations in the disputed areas.