It was once home to 70 families. But residents say threats from Islamic State have grown since Kurdish Peshmerga forces were forced out of the area by federal forces in 2017.
Fifty families have since fled.
“Go and film the locked doors. Check and see how many houses are locked out of 70. People are miserable here,” villager Mohammed Jabar said.
The same fate has befallen other villages in the area, where six predominantly Kurdish villages have been abandoned in fear of ISIS.
In the past two days alone, ISIS has carried out three separate attacks in Diyala province, killing an Iraqi army soldier, five Hashd al-Shaabi militiamen, and wounding 15 others.
The burst of attacks has put Peshmerga forces in the area on high alert. They say the area is a security vacuum left vulnerable to attack.
“Daesh [Islamic State] has grown from a group to a force,” Diler Shkur, a Peshmerga infantry commander said. “They have reorganized themselves thanks to the Iraqi government, because they neither allow us to carry out operations in this huge security zone to protect at least the Kurdish inhabited areas, nor are they capable of protecting them. Across frontlines and observation posts where the Peshmerga are present, we have fortified our bases and made preparations [against ISIS].”
According to intelligence obtained by the Peshmerga, ISIS has deployed 30 well-trained jihadists commanded by a foreign emir to the Khanaqin, Jalawla and Qaratapa regions. Iraqi intelligence estimates 1,500 ISIS militants have recently been deployed across the Diyala, Saladin and Kirkuk provinces.
