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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – American forces reportedly killed five Islamic State (ISIS) fighters while engaged in intense fighting on a mountaintop in territory disputed by Erbil and Baghdad on Sunday morning, witnesses told Rudaw English.
Early Sunday morning fighting involving warplanes and helicopters took place on Qarachogh mountain, overlooking the town of Makhmour, which has been subject to several ISIS attacks in recent months.
“Around 7:10 this morning, the warplanes hit the Qarachogh mountain and then four helicopters circled around and fired at the mountain,” a local witness who asked for his identity to be withheld told Rudaw English on Sunday.
“Then the Americans troops descended from the helicopters, and around an hour ago the Iraqi army were present in the area,” he added.
One senior Kurdish security source confirmed to Rudaw English that the Americans were involved in the attack, but said he was not at liberty to offer further details to the media.
“I can tell you that five Daesh were killed and four helicopters were involved in the attack backed by warplanes,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Ghazi Faysal is a member of a 15-man Peshmerga group protecting the village of Ali Rash, south of Qarachogh mountain, from where he says he witnessed the raid. Warplane bombing of three ISIS hideout sites began at around 7 am, and was followed by fire from four helicopter gunships.
“Around 200 soldiers are on the mountain and some of them are Americans,” Faysal, who is in close contact with the Peshmerga and Iraqi Army told Rudaw English. “I don’t know how many Daesh [Islamic State militants] were killed, but the fighting was intense and the Americans hoisted troops onto the mountains.”
Rudaw English reached out to Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson Colonel Myles B. Caggins III, but he was unavailable for comment.
Located just 60 kilometers southwest of Erbil, Qarachogh mountain has become a safe haven for several hundred Islamic State fighters since the group’s territorial control of the Nineveh Plains came to an end in mid-2017.
Kurdish officials have repeatedly warned about the resurgence of ISIS in Makhmour, part of a swathe of northern Iraqi territory whose control is disputed by the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil and federal government in Baghdad.
Land disputes have created a buffer zone between the territorial boundaries of Iraqi Army and Peshmerga control, where ISIS militants have been able to revive their former control.
“The dispute has created a vacuum in which neither government wants to conduct operations against ISIS in areas of the seam, either due to a lack of political will or due to a fear that doing so could instigate conflict between the two governments,” the Pentagon Inspector General reported in its latest report released in February.
Kurdish and Iraqi security forces backed by the US-led anti-ISIS coalition have separately carried out several operations in the area, but have failed to root out the militants from the arid mountains.
ISIS militants have terrorized locals in the area and last summer carried out a campaign of crop field arson in and around Makhmour, specifically targeting families who were unwilling to cooperate with their demands.
ISIS fighters recently attacked Makhmour refugee camp, which houses Kurds displaced by the fighting in southeast Turkey between Kurdish militants and Turkish armed forces in the 1990s. During the two hours of fighting, two militants and one of the camp’s guards were killed.
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