Father survives suspected ISIS attack that killed three sons in Iraq’s Diyala province
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A father is in critical condition after surviving an attack that killed his three sons in Diyala province's Jalawla town on Thursday, a Kurdish official told Rudaw. The attack is suspected to have been carried out by remnant holdouts of the Islamic State group (ISIS).
As Hussein Ismael was on his way to tend to his orchard in the village of Sheikh Baba, he found himself surrounded by gunmen, Shamal Abdulrahman, head security official for the district of Kolajo told Rudaw.
Neighboring towns in Diyala province, Kolajo is under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government, while Jalawla is disputed between Erbil and Baghdad’s rule.
"The Daesh militants ambushed him, engaging in a fight with them. He was wounded," Abdulrahman told Rudaw reporter Halo Mohammed.
Surrounded and wounded, he reached out to his three sons. “They tried to help their father – but they all ended up being killed," Abdulrahman said.
Sheikh Baba is a predominantly inhabited by Sunni Arabs. The villagers are heavily reliant on livestock, groves and orchards. Formerly controlled by ISIS militants as part of their self-declared caliphate, Jalawla saw some of the heaviest battles between Kurdish Peshmerga forces in 2014 until its recapture by the end of that year.
Having now lost all of its urban strongholds, ISIS is now most active in Iraq’s remote deserts and mountains of disputed territories contested by the federal government and the autonomous Kurdish region, where a security vacuum has opened up.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for a spate of attacks on civilians, and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), vowing to exploit the drawdown of American troops in Iraq, using hit-and-run tactics to harass local farmers and torch crop their fields. The group has claimed responsibility for arson attacks in Diyala and Mosul provinces.
On Tuesday, the ISF launched a renewed push of multi-pronged operations against ISIS holdouts remaining in the south of Kirkuk and on the fringes of Salahaddin province in a bid to root out the group's presence in the region.
Reporting by Halo Mohammed and Zhelwan Z. Wali
Editing by Shawn Carrié