ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — An improvised explosive device suspected to be set by Islamic State (ISIS) sleeper cells in Makhmour town killed four members of a Kurdish family on Tuesday.
Salim Bahram and four of his sons - Safin, Sarwar, Qasim and Mohammed - were travelling on an unpaved road to their farm in Qaraj Plains when they hit an IED on Tuesday morning.
Mohammed was the only family member to survive the blast and is now being treated at an Erbil hospital.
Relatives of the victims believe the bomb was set by ISIS sleeper cells, who are active in the area at night.
“Security is under the control of Daesh [ISIS] during the night but they do not appear in daylight. There is no security and the [Iraqi] army has merely blocked the road. He went there to earn an income and make ends meet,” Salim’s brother Hunar told Rudaw.
Makhmour mayor Rizgar Mustafa told Rudaw that an Arab who accompanied the family was also injured in the explosion.
“I went to the scene and collected heads and hands. There is no security at all. It is all a lie,” said Salim’s brother Hussein.
The family regularly travelled on the road in question, Hussein added, believing the IED’s to be new.
Although in Erbil province, Makhmour lies in territory disputed between Erbil and Baghdad. ISIS was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in late 2017 but it still remains active in some parts of the country, especially in disputed areas where lack of coordination between Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi Army has given the group a chance to carry out attacks, explosions and kidnappings.
Ibrahim Hameed is a resident of Qaraj. He told Rudaw that they have not experienced security and freedom since the Kurdish Peshmerga forces withdrew from the district.
“There has not been security here since the Peshmerga forces left. There is no freedom of movement. Now I cannot go to my own village, which is empty,” he said.
The Peshmerga were forced out of Makhmour and other disputed areas in October 2017 by the Iraqi army and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi) after the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum.
Peshmerga fighter Aram Mustafa, his brother Harez and cousin Peshawa Abdulrahman, all in their 20s, were searching for cattle in a village in Kirkuk on Saturday when they were killed and set ablaze by armed men. ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming they were all Peshmerga.
Iraqi federal police found a mass grave in a village in Kirkuk province during an “inspection and clearance” operation on Tuesday, according to Yehia Rasool, military spokesperson for Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
“It contains the remains of more than 50 people executed by Daesh gangs during their control of the village,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Reporting from Makhmour by Ranja Jamal
Translations by Karwan Faidhi Dri
