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Kurdistan
The town of Sinjar is considered part of the Yezidi heartland. File photo: AFP / Safin Hamed
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Two Iraqi Army personnel were killed and another wounded while attempting to defuse explosives in a booby trap-laden house in a town south of Mount Shingal, Nineveh province on Saturday, according to a local official.
The explosion took place in the Yezidi town of Gir Uzer (otherwise known by its Arabic name of al-Qahtaniyah) killing personnel from the Iraqi Army’s 15th brigade, including a captain.
“On Saturday, a booby trapped house exploded in the Girzarak neighborhood of Gir Uzer district, while Iraqi forces were busy defusing it,” Khider Khudida, head of Gir Uzer district told Rudaw on Saturday.
“The explosion killed an Iraqi army captain and a soldier, and wounded another soldier,” he added.
Girazak was once home to over 20,000 people before Islamic State (ISIS) militants stormed the town and other Yezidi communities in Iraq in 2014, according to Khudida.
ISIS targeted the Yezidi religious minority with particular fervor, considering them to be heretics. Thousands were abducted, enslaved and killed by the group.
Five years later, the vast majority of Yezidis displaced by ISIS violence continue to live in IDP camps across the Kurdistan Region.
Much of Girazak has since been abandoned, and many houses are “loaded with explosive devices,” Khudida told Rudaw. Other neighborhoods in Shingal have suffered a similar fate and remain unpopulated.
Civilian reluctance to return has been confounded by security fears in the Shingal area, due to the presence of a host of different militias and forces, including Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-linked groups like the Shingal Protection Units (YBS), the Iraqi Army, provincial police, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Peshmerga linked forces, Ezidkhan, and Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF).
In an effort to eradicate ISIS remnants in the country, Iraqi Security Forces, alongside the PMF and with Iraqi and US-led coalition airstrikes, launched Operation Will of Victory, whose offensives have taken place in provinces including Nineveh, on July 7.
Additional reporting from Nahro Mohammed
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