Islamic State militants attacked Bab al-Khan village and clashed with both the predominantly Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi and Sunni tribal Hashd al-Ashairy paramilitias near Shingal’s cement factory, deputy governor of Mosul province Sirwan Rozhbayani told Rudaw English on Wednesday.
In a follow-up operation after the attack, five ISIS militants were killed by the Iraqi security forces and Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitias in the mountains around Shingal, confirmed a Wednesday tweet by Iraqi Security Media Cell spokesman Yehia Rasool.
ISIS militants stormed Yezidi communities in Iraq’s Shingal region in 2014, when the group was at the height of its power and its self-styled caliphate spanned a third of both Syria and Iraq.
When ISIS moved to take the eastern Shingal village Bab al-Khan, its residents fled.
The village, along with others in its vicinity, has remained unpopulated, with thousands of Yezidis still living in IDP camps across the Kurdistan Region. A lack of security, jobs, and basic services has prevented many of the estimated 200,000 displaced from returning home.
Reluctance to return has been confounded by uncertainty around security in the area, due to the presence of different militias and forces in the area claimed by both the Iraqi federal government and Kurdistan Regional Government.
Resident armed militias and forces including Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-linked groups like the Shingal Protection Units (YBS), the Iraqi Army, provincial police, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Peshmerga linked forces, Ezidkhan, and Hashd al-Shaabi.
Thousands were abducted, enslaved and killed by the group, with ISIS considering the Yezidi religious minority to be heretics. Close to 3,000 Yezidis remain missing, according to Yezidi Affairs Office from the KRG Ministry Religion and Endowment.
The Iraqi government announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in December 2017. However, 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.
In an effort to eradicate ISIS remnants in the country, Iraqi Security Forces, alongside the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and with Iraqi and US-led coalition airstrikes, undertook Operation Will of Victory in the provinces of Nineveh, Anbar and Saladin on July, 7 2019.
The operation entered its second phase on July 20, 2019.
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