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MERKHAS, Iraq — Kakai villages in Diyala’s Khanaqin area have been emptied following repeated attacks at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group.
Peshmerga fighter Faris Karim told Rudaw of the day ISIS fighters attacked his village of Merkhas.
His cousins and brothers died after militants stormed the village and shot dead six members of the same family.
“My brother was lying here. I called him many times. He had been shot dead... I tried to carry my brother, he remained silent. I was trying to pull him across the ground and screamed for help for about 40 minutes.”
“My brother was the mukhtar of the village and was killed. He was very kind to all the residents, he did nothing but good. They killed him because he was a Kurd and had three children,” said farmer Akram Hatan.
Iraqi MP and Khanaqin native Sherko Mirways told Rudaw English that more than 10 Kakai villages in Khanaqin have been emptied due to attacks from ISIS and “unidentified gunmen.”
"In the Khanaqin area there are 93 villages, of which 23 are Arab. The Arab villagers are carrying out as normal. There are 70 Kurdish villages left in the area. There are 30 to 32 villages that have been emptied due to attacks from Daesh ([ISIS] and unidentified gunmen. Around 12 of these villages are Kakai,” he said on Sunday.
“In a village with ten households, the villagers were forced to flee after two of the villagers were beheaded," he added.
Since 2014, Kakai Kurds have been targeted by the Islamic State (ISIS) because of their religious beliefs. Many now live near Kirkuk, Khanaqin, and in the Nineveh Plains. They have fought alongside Kurdish Peshmerga units during the counter-ISIS campaign that began in 2016.
Khanaqin lies within territory disputed between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad. In-fighting over control of the areas has created a security vacuum exploited by ISIS to terrorise local populations.
In June, an ISIS attack killed six Kakais in the village of Dara, near the border with Iran.
Translation by Sarkawt Mohammed
Reporting by Hallo Mohammed
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