ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Five members of Iraq's state-sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic) were killed in a clash with Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Diyala province on Tuesday, according to state media and the PMF.
Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported that the fighters were killed in the eastern Diyala province’s Naft Khanna area.
In a statement published on their official Telegram channel, the PMF announced that the fighters were killed during a security operation in the region.
"The security operation aims to pursue and eliminate the remnants of ISIS and to banish any threat to these areas by these terrorist gangs," reads the statement, naming the deceased as Muhammad Zafer al-Tamimi, an assistant intelligence official in the PMF’s first brigade (Badr), and Abbas Muhammad Hussein al-Khazraji, associate in charge of the movement also in Badr, in addition to others.
The head of PMF Faleh Al-Fayyad issued an official statement on Tuesday evening in response to the deaths, saying that “terrorism will not achieve what it aspires to in Iraq”.
"The blood of the PMF fighters that is shed on the Iraqi land daily will light the way for all the mujahideen [those engaged in jihad], the opponents of terrorism and sectarianism, and all plans that seek to undermine the security, unity and sovereignty of Iraq will fail,” al-Fayyad said in the statement released over the PMF's telegram channel.
On January 24th, at least 11 fighters from PMF were killed in an ambush by the Islamic State (ISIS) group north of the capital.
The PMF was created in 2014 when Sistani issued a fatwa (a religious call to action) urging young Iraqis to take up arms against ISIS. The loose coalition of militia groups was formally recognized as an Iraqi armed force by the parliament in 2016, enjoying similar privileges as the Iraqi Army.
Since the territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq in late 2017, the role of the PMF has increasingly been called into question, with demands to withdraw units garrisoned in northern areas and to fully integrate them into the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF).
Others have fought to maintain the PMF's autonomy in order to allow it to continue carrying out the military objectives of its backer, Iran.
PMF units close to Iran are widely accused of abducting and killing protesters during Iraq's recent wave of anti-government unrest. They are also believed responsible for a spate of deadly rocket attacks targeting US and coalition personnel stationed at bases across Iraq.
Updated at 20:30
