Residents suspect the fire was sparked by an electrical fault, but local security forces are not ruling out arson.
Mahma Khalil, the mayor of Shingal, told Rudaw the two men, from the Yezidi village of Borek, east of Snune, were killed while trying to extinguish a fire in a neighboring village.
The fire started in the Arab village of Xazuke around 1am on Sunday, according to Rudaw’s correspondent in Shingal. A large group of Borek residents rushed to the scene to extinguish the fire before it spread.
The injured man is in a critical condition at a Mosul hospital. Burials have already been held in Sharfadin for the two men killed.
Ezidi 24, a news outlet specializing in Yezidi news, identified the two men as Barzan Omer Kaabo and Saed Sabri.
The fire consumed almost 8,000 dunams of land, Snune’s agricultural department chief told Rudaw.
Fires have swept farming communities in Iraq’s northern provinces of Kirkuk, Saladin, Diyala, and Nineveh in recent weeks, destroying wheat and barley crops and farm machinery.
There are several theories to explain the cause of the fires.
Every year, farmers burn dry weeds and brushes to make their land more fertile for the next harvest. Sometimes these fires get out of control, spreading to other foliage dried by the summer sun.
Electrical faults, cigarette ends, and Turkish airstrikes targeting Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions along the shared border have also been known to start fires.
However, farmers say many of the fires were started deliberately by insurgent groups, including remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS), after landowners refused to pay the militants.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for several fires across Iraq on its media channels, claiming it is targeting the farms of “apostates” and those who collaborate with Iraqi security forces.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has downplayed the jihadist role in the fires, identifying land disputes, electrical faults, and summer temperatures as more likely causes.
The directorate of civil defense, which manages Iraq’s fire fighters, has stood by the version of events spun by the PM.
Maj Gen Kadhim Salman Buhan, director general of the Civil Defense Directorate, told state TV channel Iraqiyah on Saturday that most of the fires are due to “neglect” – eliminating ISIS cells as a major cause.
Col Jawdat Abid, spokesman for the Civil Defense Directorate, told TV network al-Rasheed on Sunday the scale of the fires means they need planes and helicopters to battle the flames.
“We don’t have these airplanes yet, but we hope that in the near future, after the improvement of economy in our beloved country, that there be airplanes as they are faster than vehicles,” he said.
Iraq’s Directorate of Military Intelligence announced Saturday it had captured a “terrorist” who had been collecting taxes imposed on local farmers in Anbar’s al-Karma.
The money was used to “finance the gangs of terrorist Daesh and their families”, the directorate said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
ISIS reportedly torched crop fields in the disputed territory of Makhmour after locals refused to pay the group taxes. No one has been arrested in connection with the fires.
