ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — ISIS militants killed two chieftains after storming two villages in the town of Jalawla (or Gulala) in Diyala province.
"At midnight, ISIS militants stormed Ibrahim Ali Ghedan's house, the chieftain of the village of Um Hinta, killing him and his son named Hussein,” Simko Ali, the head of the Kolajo town in nearby Kifiri, told Rudaw.
He added a daughter of the slain chieftain was also wounded by the assailants.
In the meantime, Mohammed Mullah Hassan, Khanaqin mayor told Rudaw ISIS that militants had also attacked the village of Sheikh Bawa, killing its chieftain.
Hassan confirmed the Um Hinta incident, saying Ghedan's son was kidnapped, not killed.
Jalawla is in the north of Diyala province. It is 235 kilometers southeast of Erbil city and just to the east of Lake Hamrin. Jalawla is a Kurdish town with an Arab and Turkmen population as well. In 2014 it briefly fell to ISIS but was later liberated. An estimated 70,000 people live in Jalawla, including outlying 39 villages.
There are growing threats of the emergence of ISIS militants in Kirkuk and surrounding areas. Kurdish Peshmerga withdrew in October 2017, following a takeover by Iraqi forces supported by Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries.
Fearing the presence of ISIS in southern Kirkuk, Kurdish people from Daquq have abandoned their village homes because Iraqi forces are present only inside cities and the larger towns in southern and western Kirkuk, and Hashd al-Shaabi cannot function as a counterterror organization.
Despite Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s declaration in early December that the war with ISIS had been military won in Iraq, the group’s sleeper cells have in recent months increased their hit-and-run operations against Iraqi forces and Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries. ISIS killed 27 Hashd fighters in mid-February.
Since then, the Iraqi army and Iran-backed Shiite militants have launched a number of military operations against the remaining ISIS elements in the Kirkuk region.
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