“The federal police mistakenly thought the car was carrying ISIS fighters, and as such killed all of them,” Shiekh Lewis Sindi, mayor of Daquq, told Rudaw English on Thursday.
The series of events which lead to the deaths remain sketchy, and federal officials contacted by Rudaw have refused to comment. Rudaw has also been unable to reach the Iraqi interior ministry, which is responsible for the federal police.
Sindi said his administration will meet with federal police chiefs to examine what happened.
“We call upon the governorate [of Kirkuk] to start an investigation into the matter,” the mayor said.
Iraq’s central government is yet to send an investigative team, he added.
Graphic: Maps4news, Sarkawt Mohammed / RudawISIS allegedly began shelling the village of Dara in the Haftaghar district at around 10:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday, according to Rajab Kakai, head of the Daquq-based Mitra Organization for the Development of Yarsani Culture.
Four people were injured in the village when a shell struck their house, Kakai told Rudaw. Among them was an elderly woman, who later died in hospital.
At least three shells fell on Dara, forcing residents to flee to Daquq, he added.
Around the same time, a local family was returning home from the nearby village of Mansour. While travelling on the Haftaghar road, their car was suddenly attack by unknown gunmen.
Azad Rostam, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) office in Daquq, told Rudaw eight members of the same family were travelling in the vehicle and seven were killed. A two-year-old sustained injuries but survived, he said.
Other reports, and social media posts featuring photographs of nine graves, indicate nine occupants died.
“No one knows if it is an ISIS ambush or the federal police shot them,” said Rostam.
“These [Iraqi] forces are very disparate. There is no coordination between them. Federal police do not recognize anyone and say they are the only authority in the area,” he added.
A federal police officer in the area, who spoke to Rudaw on condition of anonymity, said the family was killed following a “misunderstanding”.
At around the same time, families fleeing the shelling of Dara arrived at a federal police checkpoint in Haftaghar, where they were met with long queues.
In the ensuing chaos, a dispute broke out between federal officers and a local policeman. The local officer was killed. Rudaw could not immediately confirm the circumstances of his death.
The officer’s family and a crowd of Daquq locals flocked to the checkpoint to protest. They remained there until 4 a.m. local time.
Responding to the disturbance, Kirkuk operations commander Saad Harbi and Kirkuk police commander Ali Kamal came to Daquq and replaced the checkpoint’s federal officers with members of the Kirkuk Emergency Police, Kakai told Rudaw.
Although it was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in December 2017, ISIS remnants have resumed their earlier insurgency tactics – including ambushes on federal police checkpoints and shelling civilian areas.
