ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Suspected Islamic State (ISIS) militants attacked the home of a village chieftain in Salahaddin province late Thursday, killing him, a local official told Rudaw.
The victim was identified as Fakhri al-Abbasi, whose family had also been targeted by the group in previous attacks.
“The victim was the mukhtar of a village within the Samarra district, and he was a Sunni,” Kawa Shekhani, advisor to the governor of Salahaddin, told Rudaw on Friday.
He added that “all members of his family, except for one son, were killed by ISIS” in earlier assaults.
The press office of Salahaddin Governor Badr al-Fahl condemned the killing as “a cowardly terrorist act,” stressing that “the blood of the martyrs will not go in vain.”
Shekhani said that following the governor’s directives, security forces were immediately ordered to launch an investigation into the attack.
In a separate statement, the governor’s office said security forces in the area bear responsibility for the “dangerous security breach,” urging agencies to intensify efforts to uncover the circumstances of the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.
ISIS seized large swathes of territory in Iraq in 2014 but was declared territorially defeated in 2017 after three years of heavy fighting. Despite this, the group remains a persistent security threat, particularly in the disputed territories between Erbil and Baghdad, including Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Salahaddin provinces. The Kurdistan Region also continues to face occasional threats from ISIS sleeper cells.
On Monday, Kurdistan Region security forces detained a suspected ISIS emir and another group member during a raid in the city of Halabja, an operation that left one security officer injured. The arrests came as part of a sweep targeting three wanted ISIS suspects in a Halabja neighborhood. One of the suspects escaped and remains at large, according to a senior official from the Sulaimani Asayish Operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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