ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Four armed men attacked a village in Diyala province’s district of Khanaqin late Sunday night, but were thwarted by Peshmerga forces, a commander told Rudaw on Monday. “It’s not clear whether the armed men were Daesh [the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State] or not. Peshmerga prevented the attack and injured one [attacker]” in the village of Dakay Haji Qadir, Mahmoud Sangawi, a Peshmerga commander, told Rudaw’s Sirwan Abbas. The area is disputed between Erbil and Baghdad. Officials have said that ISIS is reorganizing and regaining strength in Iraq, especially in disputed territories. ISIS regularly carries out activities in areas like Diyala, Kirkuk and Salahaddin, where they exploit a security vacuum void of both Kurdish and federal Iraqi forces. In early February, the Ministry of Peshmerga said their forces have been deployed to the Makhmour and Qarachogh areas as a result of security threats imposed by ISIS. ISIS claimed on Thursday in its weekly propaganda newspaper al-Naba that it had killed and injured 40 people in 30 attacks in Iraq in the past week. Despite the group's territorial defeat in Iraq in December 2017, remnants of the group have returned to earlier insurgency tactics, ambushing security forces, kidnapping and executing suspected informants, and extorting money from vulnerable rural populations.
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