Seven members of the Kurdish forces were killed in an ISIS ambush when the terror group attacked Liheban and Khidirjija villages in Qarachogh area, the Ministry of Peshmerga said in a statement on Friday.
Several others have been injured, the ministry added. A senior Peshmerga official confirmed to Rudaw that ten Peshmerga fighters and three civilians were killed.
In this most recent attack on Qarachogh, ISIS also clashed with civilians, killing three brothers with the youngest only 11-years-old.
“My brother informed us and said come out, Daesh [Arabic acronym for ISIS] has surrounded the house,” Kazim Ismael, one of the brothers of the killed, told Rudaw’s Halabja Sadoon following the attack. “We fought with all the strength we had, we resisted but unfortunately they were martyred.”
ISIS seized control of swaths of land in Iraq in 2014. It was declared territorially defeated in 2017, but continues to carry out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions across several provinces. Peshmerga officials have blamed the deadly ISIS attacks on a lack of coordination between them and Iraqi forces in the disputed areas.
The Peshmerga ministry in the statement called on the Iraqi defence ministry and the international coalition forces to cooperate, coordinate, and start their operations quickly without waiting. Efforts to form joint brigades in the disputed areas began earlier this year, but have stalled.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani strongly condemned the attack in a statement, saying strong military and defense measures must be taken against ISIS attacks.
Steps towards a “more efficient cooperation between the Iraqi army, the Peshmerga and the support of the international coalition to fill the security and military gap” in areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad, Barzani added.
Prime Minister Masrour Barzani also emphasized on a stronger cooperation between the Peshmerga, Iraqi army and the international coalition to end the “brutal ISIS attacks and protect the lives of Peshmerga and residents of those areas,” he said in a Facebook post.
The terror group’s threat has increased in Iraq and the disputed territories as it has killed eight Kurdish soldiers in five attacks in the past month.
“None of the people [Peshmerga] on the frontlines deserve to be put there,” Facebook user Rashid Khalil said in a post of photos of the Peshmerga that were killed. “It’s always the children of the poor who sacrifice their lives and are loyal to this land.”
The mother of the three sons killed in their confrontation with ISIS called on the leader of the Kurdistan Region ruling party Masoud Barzani to look into the situation as they were attacked in their own home. The leader offered his condolences to the family in a statement.
“My son was eleven, the other was 18 and one was 24. He is married, he has a wife and a daughter,” Bayan Osman told Rudaw, adding that she is ready to sacrifice the life of the rest of her sons for the Kurdistan Region.
On Sunday, ISIS claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on the Peshmerga in Diyala. Earlier in November, it also claimed responsibility for a late October attack in which two Peshmerga were killed on the Erbil-Kirkuk border. A few days later, the Peshmerga prevented another attack in the same area.
The Kurdistan Region’s interior minister said the ISIS “war continues” on Tuesday.
“In the Kurdistan Region when we say terrorism and ISIS threats remain in Iraq, it is not our own analysis, it is based on data and information from intelligence institutions. ISIS' behavior, attacking Peshmerga and Iraqi federal forces, shows that there is still a lot of violence and the war continues,” said minister Rebar Ahmed.
The gap between Peshmerga and Iraqi forces is up to 40 kilometers wide in parts. “ISIS has been able to exploit the lack of coordination between forces to operate in the ungoverned territory,” the Pentagon stated in its latest report on anti-ISIS operations.
Secretary-General of the Ministry of Peshmerga Jabar Yawar on Monday told Rudaw that the recent ISIS attacks are originating from areas controlled by Iraqi forces.
“I can say that whenever ISIS attacks Peshmerga forces, they come from areas controlled by Iraqi forces, and after they are done, they return to those areas,” Yawar said.
Updated at 2:15 pm
