“Since early this morning, nearly 700 persons from ISIS held areas have fled to the Peshmerga front line [in south Kirkuk] as a result of the Iraqi army’s assault to liberate Hawija and the area,” said Aras Ahmed, an intelligence official of the Peshmerga.
“Of the number that came here today, there were some ISIS terrorists, it turned out after our initial investigations,” he added. “Some of them confessed they were associated with ISIS.”
“We will later classify them. Those associated with ISIS, or had relatives among or were terrorists within the group will be separated from the genuine refugees,” he added.
Security forces will continue their security measures with those who confessed.
“We treat them very well without national or sectarian differences,” he added. “We assist every single person among them.”
The number of IDPs fleeing to Makhmour, some 50 kilometers south of Erbil, exceeded a thousand with many of them pleaded to stay under the sanctuary of the Peshmerga, according to Rudaw’s Ranja Jamal who was at the scene.
“Our call is to stay with you. We do not want to go to the Hashd al-Shaabi,” pleaded an arriving IDP. “Because you are better than them, have mercy. We feel very comfortable with you.”
She said they were under constant bombings and some of her family members were killed by warplanes.
“We are calling on Masoud Barzani; please do not send us back to Hashd al-Shaabi,” pleaded an elderly displaced person. “If we had wanted, we would have gone ourselves to them. If you send us to them, they would attack our dignity.”
Iraqi forces launched an assault Friday on the northern town of Hawija, one of the last bastions in the country still held by the ISIS, which is also under attack in neighboring Syria.
The operation came a day after ISIS released what it said was an audio recording of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging resistance, the first such intervention in nearly a year.
"The leaders of the Islamic State and its soldiers have realized that the path to victory is to be patient and resist the infidels whatever their alliances," said the voice in the recording, whose authenticity Washington said it had "no reason to doubt".

Since Baghdadi's previous message to his followers last November, the territory the jihadists still hold in the cross-border caliphate they proclaimed in 2014 has shrunk to a fraction of its former extent.
"A huge military operation has begun to liberate Hawija and its surrounding areas," the operation's commander, Lieutenant General Abdel Amir Yarallah, said in a statement.
Iraqi forces launched an offensive to retake the jihadist enclave around Hawija on September 21, swiftly taking the town of Sharqat on its second day before pushing on towards Hawija itself.
Yarallah said Friday's assault marked the second phase of the operation and aimed to recapture Hawija and the towns of Al-Abbasi, Riyadh and Rashad to its west, east and south.
