ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Two members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al Shaabi) and one Peshmerga fighter were injured in an Islamic State (ISIS) attack in Diyala late on Tuesday, Kurdish commanders have told Rudaw. The Peshmerga has subsequently died.
Peshmerga commander Jamal Warani told Rudaw’s Halo Mohammed that they were attacked by snipers in Omarbli village, Kifri district, with one Peshmerga fighter shot in the head.
“He was moved to a hospital and [more] forces were deployed to the site of the incident,” he said. The fighter, Muhsin Hussein, was later reported dead.
Hundreds of people on Wednesday attended Hussein's funeral. He was from the town of Rawanduz and is survived by four daughters.
The Ministry of Peshmerga reiterated the importance of reaching a comprehensive agreement with the Iraqi forces "to avoid similar incidents and to defeat terrorists" in a statement released on Wednesday.
President Nechirvan Barzani in a tweet posted on Wednesday said he strongly condemns the attack on Kifri reiterating the importance of rushing the cooperation between Peshmerga and Iraq’s forces in the area.
Two members of the PMF were injured in an ISIS attack in Jalawla, Peshmerga commander Ahmed Mustafa said on Tuesday.
Both Kifri and Jalawla are in Diyala. Parts of the province are disputed between Erbil and Baghdad, where a security vacuum has allowed ISIS sleeper cells to target both civilians and members of the security forces.
Sabreen News, a PMF-affiliated Telegram channel reported ISIS attacked Sunni PMF forces, injuring one person.
ISIS has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
The terror group seized control of swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019 but remains a threat on both sides of the border, carrying out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions across several provinces, including Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala and Salahaddin.
