ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A large number of Islamic State fighters, including two senior leaders, were killed in US-led air raids south of Kirkuk on Thursday, said the local police chief, Brigadier General Sarhad Qadir.
He identified the dead Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) leaders as Abu Abida and Niama Abid Naif, also known as Abu Fatima.
At a welcoming ceremony near the village of al-Bashir, the pair was receiving a large number of jihadi fighters from Mosul, the IS stronghold in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria, which the group has declared the capital of its “caliphate.”
That is when the venue was bombed by US and French fighters.
Sources said that Abu Fatima was an IS Wali, or leader, and Abu Abida was a senior military commander in Kirkuk province.
Two successive days of air raids have pounded IS positions in Shamsya, Bashir, Aziria, Atashan, Hawija, Zap, Telward and Rashad in Kirkuk.
Meanwhile, the deputy commander of Kurdish forces in Duhok province, Brigadier Omar Bosley, said that the Peshmerga had hammered the IS-held village of Kani Shirin in Zumar district with artillery, killing 12 militants. He added that the bombing of IS targets was ongoing.
In a separate incident, IS fighters stormed into the Shabak Kurdish village of Fadiliyah in Nineveh province on Wednesday, raiding homes and abducting seven people, according to Ghazwan Dawdi, a member of the provincial council.
"The militants bombed the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), called the villagers traitors and accused them of helping the Peshmerga," who are at war with the rebels, he said.
The village is in Nineveh’s multiethnic Bashiqa region, which is east of the IS stronghold of Mosul and contains nearly 50 villages of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and Christians. The militants have been especially harsh in their treatment of minorities.
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