Kurdish security chase suspected ISIS militants from Mount Bamo

BAMO, Kurdistan Region — A suspected ISIS group has attacked a Kurdish security office in town of Bamo in Halabja. Local Kurdish forces repelled the attack, but the group is still at-large.

The Kurdistan Region’s security agency (Asayesh) stated on Tuesday that they discovered an ISIS group’s hideout on Mount Bamo on Monday night.

The statement added the militants, who remain at large, are suspected to be ISIS militants.

Bamo town, 195 kilometers southeast of the Kurdistan Region’s capital, is just west of the mountain range. It is within the Garmiyan bloc. 

After Mount Bamo was controlled, “their depot was also located and BKC rifle, two Kalashnikov rifles, a sack of TNTs, 17 RPG bullets, many food substances and a box of bullets,” according to the Asayesh statement.

“There was precise information on their movements in Mount Hamrin,” it added.

Before the Asayesh investigation and subsequent statement on Tuesday, local officials were unaware of the fighters’ association.

“After the group opened fire on the Bamo Asayesh (security) forces on the Mount Bamo, our forces repelled them fiercely, chasing them,” Bamo Mayor Adil Mullah Salih told Rudaw, adding “raid and search operations then located the unknown armed group and continued on to Mount Bamo.”

He claimed there were no casualties on either side.

Rudaw’s local correspondent, Halo Mohammed, reported that the group was comprised of 20 gunmen.

“Since no member of the [unknown] group has been arrested, wounded or fallen, we do not know where they came from and what their objective is,” Salih said, adding that their intention is to destabilize the area’s security.

The mayor said it was the first such incident on the mountain.

There was no immediate claim by ISIS of the Bamo group being ISIS militants.

Some similar armed groups previously engaged in clashes with security forces in the area, with many of them being killed or arrested.

In January, security forces in Sulaimani announced the arrest of two ISIS groups which were planning to carry out acts of terrorism in order to cause instability in the Kurdistan Region in January. One of the groups was all-female and was tasked with social media propaganda for the extremist group in the Kurdistan Region.

The arrests were carried out in July and August last year, but an inquiry into the groups took about 100 days to be released.

In 2016, 60 ISIS militants including three leaders and were arrested and 14 others were killed in Sulaimani province in the course of a year of military maneuvers against the group who had infiltrated the region, many of them from Mosul.

Kurdish, Iraqi and US-led international anti-ISIS officials have warned of ISIS remnants in Iraq after they were declared militarily defeated in December.

Mount Bamo is in the Hamrin mountain range and Kurdish officials have expressed concern about ISIS militants fleeing from places like liberated Mosul to Hamrin, as the rugged area provides many possible hideouts.