Safar and four others had gone “to search for desert truffles” near Ali Rash village, close to Mount Qarachogh, Rashad Galali, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)’s office in Makhmour told Rudaw on Wednesday after he met with the four who were freed.
The five were captured by ISIS militants who then “took them to a nearby cave in Ali Rash village, grilling them with questions for four hours," Galali said, recalling the account of the four who had been released.
Safar was the only one of the five who had a smart phone. The militants checked his phone and saw photos of Safar in uniform.
"After investigation, ISIS released four of them, but they decided to keep Bazhdar Safar after checking his mobile and seeing photos of him in Asayesh [security] uniform,” said Galali.
They believe Safar was killed on or near Mount Qarachogh. The body has not been recovered.
Nashir, an ISIS-linked outlet, published a photo on its Telegram account on Tuesday purportedly showing Safar just before he was killed.
Safar was a member of PUK’s Asayesh forces and a law student at Kirkuk University, according to Galali.
ISIS militants seized Makhmour and surrounding villages in 2014 before they were quickly routed in a combined operation led by the Peshmerga, Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerillas, and Coalition forces.
Although the jihadist group was declared defeated in Iraq in December 2017, its remnants have retreated into Iraq's deserts and mountains, where they have resumed earlier hit-and-run tactics of kidnap, ambush, bombing, and execution.
"ISIS has now gone back to its 2012 partisan tactics carrying out hit and run operations and forcefully taking taxes from locals,” Peshmerga commander Sirwan Barzani told Rudaw Wednesday evening.
The militants are essentially free to operate in the disputed areas between Iraqi and Peshmerga forces where security gaps have been exposed after federal forces ousted the Peshmerga from these zones in the aftermath of the Kurdistan independence referendum of September 2017.
"If the Iraqi army does not deal a blow to their remnants, they will become a serious threat to the whole of Iraq," Barzani said.
The militants have weapons depots and tunnels where 60 to 70 of them are hiding out in the Makhmour area, the Peshmerga commander explained.
He wants to see the Iraqi army establish a permanent presence in the area. "The solution is that the Iraqi army should be returning to this area, not just carry out an operation and leave."
The Peshmerga have a base on the top of Mount Qarachogh and Barzani said they could clear ISIS from the mountain within days, “but there is no guarantee that they will not come back" in the absence of armed forces.
