ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Jihadi fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) repulsed two attacks by the Shiite Badr militia in Bashir village south of Kirkuk on Sunday, killing and wounding more than 50 militiamen.
Meawhile, the ISIS declared an Islamic state Sunday that stretches from the provinces of Aleppo in Syria to Diyala in Iraq, with their commander Abubakr al-Baghdadi named the caliph.
The ISIS has been part of a Sunni-led insurgency that includes loyalists of Iraq’s former regime. Its fighters are involved in the fighting in both Syria and Iraq, with the group’s avowed aim to create an Islamic state straddling both countries.
In the early morning fighting Sunday, more than 20 members of the Badr Brigade – Iraq’s oldest Shiite militia -- were killed, 30 wounded and 20 captured by ISIS fighters, sources told Rudaw.
They said that the jihadis shelled positions of Kurdish forces in response, killing one policeman and wounding at least seven Peshmergas.
Another militia also was reported pinned down by the militants at a separate location, the sources said. They said the militiamen had attacked the insurgents without coordinating with Kurdish forces in the area.
In Bashir, "The ISIS forces allowed them (Shiite militiamen) to advance a little bit, but then ambushed them from behind,” said a Kirkuk district official. He said the militants had destroyed two Badr Army Humvee vehicles.
"The force (Badr Army) had not coordinated the attack (on the ISIS) with Peshmerga forces or the people of the area," he added. "More than 20 were killed, 30 wounded and 20 arrested (by ISIS).”
In a bid to raise morale and try and recover its captured fighters, the Badr militiamen mobilized another force of 100 armed men from the towns of Daquq, Tuz Khurmatu and Taza Khurmatu Sunday afternoon.
But Faruq Ahmed, the security chief of Tuz Khurmatu, reported that again the militiamen “fell into an ISIS trap. Twenty-seven of them are missing, and it’s not known if they have been killed or wounded,” he said, including the militia commander.
The village of Bashir was the scene of irregular clashes between the Peshmerga forces and the ISIS last week. Things had been calm until Sunday’s militia attack, which had been named operation “defending our own areas.”
Bashir is home to a large Turkmen population, who are mostly Shiites. The village has been reportedly evacuated after the ISIS killed a number of villagers.
Earlier in the day a roadside bomb hit a convoy of Shiite fighters between Bashir and Tuz Khurmatu, injuring seven militiamen.
Over the past two weeks, ISIS fighters have launched several attacks against Turkmen villages south of Kirkuk, mainly Bashir village, leading to fierce clashes with Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
Peshmerga forces moved into Kurdish-populated areas outside the Kurdistan Region’s formal borders after the Iraqi army largely collapsed and retreated from large parts of the country under a blitz by ISIS and other insurgents that began more than two weeks ago.
Turkmen leaders in Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu had asked the Iraqi government earlier this year to form a Turkmen self-defense militia, but received a cold response from Baghdad.
In Kirkuk on Thursday, Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani said his visit was “to meet with military, security and political parties and about how to protect Kirkuk and how to make it an example of ethnic and religious coexistence.”
Kirkuk’s Turkmen population occupy important posts in the local government and despite past political disputes with the Kurds, they have now found a common adversary in the Sunni militants who make Shiites and their places of worship a primary target.
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