Three young men killed in Kirkuk village

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Three young men were killed and set ablaze in the village of Toulk in northern Kirkuk province on Saturday evening.

Peshmerga fighter Aram Mustafa, his brother Harez and cousin Peshawa Abdulrahman, all in their 20s, were searching for cattle in the area when they were killed. 

According to village residents, the three men were shot dead in their vehicle and were then set on fire. 

According to Luqman Sartki, commander of the Peshmerga’s 11th Brigade, bullet fragments were left in the vehicle but no other evidence was recovered from the scene. 

Aram and Harez’s father say the three men were searching for missing cattle in the area.

“Three to four of our cattle were killed and eaten by wolves recently. Another cow was missing. They were searching for it…I was unaware they had gone to another site and had faced this tragedy,” said Mustafa Mohammed.

The incident took place in a remote area located in a security vaccum empty of both Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi federal forces. 

“The area has been inspected before but a good operation needs a large force of 2,000 to 3,000 corps because the area is sensitive and it is suitable for hideouts,” Nariman Sallayi, Peshmerga Brigade 126 commander told Rudaw on Sunday.

Mohammed suspects that Islamic State (ISIS) militants are responsible.

“We do not have any problems with anyone. We are only suspicious about those ISIS traitors,” he said.

Disputed territories claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad in the provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala, and Salahadin have become a hotbed for the extremists group’s activities.

A major security vacuum exists in these areas, caused by a lack of military coordination and communication between the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi army since October 2017, when Erbil-Baghdad relations hit an all-time low.

Although the Iraqi government announced the territorial defeat of ISIS 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.

ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack which killed three Peshmerga fighters in an attack near Shwan in Kirkuk, according to a statement posted to its Telegram channel on Sunday. 

The group also killed and injured several federal police in Kirkuk's Zarban village in a Sunday IED attack, according to a statement published on Monday. 

Reporting by Hardi Mohammed

Translation by Sarkawt Mohammed 

Updated at 10:10pm