ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Military and political leaders south of disputed Kirkuk disagree on who was behind a deadly attack in the area early Saturday morning, with some blaming the Islamic State (ISIS) and a prominent Turkmen politician calling it “political.”
Arshad Salihi, head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front political party, said the attack near the Daquq town which left six Turkmen dead in a football stadium was a deliberate attack on the minority group.
“The Daquq attack was specifically against the Turkmen community,” Salihi told Rudaw English. “Federal police need to send reinforcements to protect the Turkmen areas in Kirkuk.”
Rockets fell on a football stadium in the Zain al-Abdeen village two kilometers east of Daquq late in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Six people were killed and four others were wounded in the incident.
Zain al-Abdeen residents are part of the Turkmen minority community and follow the Shiite variant of Islam. All the victims in Saturday’s attack were Shiite Turkmen. Daquq is 40 kilometers south of Kirkuk and in the province of the same name. The Kirkuk province is part of the territories claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad.
Salihi thinks that the attack was not ISIS, saying the group is not in Zain al-Abdeen. Instead, the attack was carried out to foment chaos in the disputed territories, according to him.
The aftermath of the August 24 attack in Daquq. Photo: TV Sajjad
“Some agenda wants to spread instability in Kirkuk and other disputed areas through these kinds of attacks,” Salihi said.
Salihi also said that the Iraqi Turkmen Front has demanded the Iraqi government send a team from the Ministry of the Interior to investigate the attack.
Others are blaming ISIS. Daquq Mayor Sheikh Lewis Findi said the attack was carried out by armed ISIS militants.
“ISIS attacked Zain al-Abdeen village with light weapons, then shelled the village with three mortars,” Lewis told Rudaw English on Monday. “The majority of the victims who lost their lives due to the attack were killed by the machine guns.”
Lewis stated that five ISIS militants attacked the village wearing uniforms of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as Hashd al-Shaabi. The PMF is a group of militias fighting ISIS, many of which are backed by Iran.
Video showing the August 24 attack in Daquq. Video: TV Dakuk
Zaki Kamal, head of the PMF’s Commando Battalion’s 16th in Kirkuk, told Rudaw English on Monday that there are ISIS sleeper cells in many areas in the disputed territories, especially around Kirkuk and Daquq.
“The clearance operations in the disputed areas were very brief and that resulted in the creation of a security vacuum in the disputed territories,” Kamal said on recent anti-ISIS operations in the area. “The security vacuum is helping the ISIS sleeper cells to attack the villages around Kirkuk and other disputed cities easily.”
The PMF leader accuses ISIS of carrying out the attack in Daquq.
“Hashd al-Shaabi has one enemy: ISIS,” said Kamal.
ISIS has not claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack on Zain al-Abdeen.
ISIS seized vast areas of northern Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014. Though declared territorially defeated in the country in December 2017, its remnants and sleeper cells remain active, returning to their earlier insurgency tactics.
According to a US Department of Defense report published in August, ISIS is “working to rebuild their capabilities” in Iraq and Syria.
Under the Iraqi constitution, Kirkuk province is considered a disputed territory claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad. In the aftermath of the Kurdish independence referendum of September 2017, Iraqi forces retook Kirkuk and other disputed provinces from Kurdish forces, who had controlled them since 2014.
In July, the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi announced during a press conference that the Iraqi Defense Ministry and Erbil’s Peshmerga Ministry reached an agreement regarding security in the disputed areas. However, the deal has yet to be implemented and Peshmerga forces have not returned to the disputed territories.
