ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Dozens of Islamic State militants were killed in Hawija—including a local leader—in overnight airstrikes on a hospital Iraqi security sources have said was used as an ISIS compound, according to an intelligence official in the Kirkuk governorate Sunday. The source, who requested anonymity, said the hospital was evacuated last year when the militants gained control of the city and used it as their base. “According to our information, a local leader called Abu Hares Samarayi was also among the dead in last night’s attack,” the source said before adding he could not verify the exact number killed in the raid. Sunday’s airstrikes followed a series of earlier attacks by coalition aircraft targeting ISIS sites around Hawija, a Sunni stronghold in Kirkuk province. With just over 400,000 inhabitants who are predominantly Sunni Arabs, Hawija has been at the center of Sunni insurgency since 2004. It is 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) southwest of Kirkuk. The Iraqi government’s crackdown on Sunni protesters in April 2013 notably intensified political divisions and sectarian polarization within the whole of the country. Kurdish officials in Kirkuk say until early in the 1940s most residents in Hawija were Kurdish, but were pushed out of the area in the so called Arabization process that changed the population demographics in the province in favor of Arabs. Earlier last month families of Peshmerga soldiers taken prisoner by local ISIS militants in Hawija said they had reached an understanding with Sunni tribal leaders for a possible prisoner exchange between the Peshmerga ministry and the militants. When the Iraqi army withdrew from the area in June 2014, tribal fighters affiliated with ISIS seized the city.
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