Zaynar Omar and Ghazi Qasim were abducted while they were fishing on Friday, Masoud Nuri, mayor of Gwer, told Rudaw’s Dilnya Rahman on Saturday. Omar was recused the same day and the body of Qasim was found the following day.
He added that the locals suspect that ISIS was to blame. Omar has also said that the people who kidnapped him were ISIS fighters.
“Following the incident, an investigative team was formed. The rescued person is being questioned. It is not clear if ISIS carried out the attack because no such case has taken place in Gwer after 2017, thanks to the efforts of Asayish [internal security] and Peshmerga forces,” said Mayor Nuri.
The mayor said it is difficult to secure the area due to a security gap between Peshmerga and Iraqi forces in the region that lies on the border between areas of Kurdish and Iraqi control.
Villagers who found the body of Qasim, who is reportedly an Iraqi soldier, told Rudaw that he was shot three times.
Hours after their abduction, Sirwan Barzani, the Peshmerga commander in the area, tweeted that they had carried out an operation against ISIS near the town.
“Joint operations between the #Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army are continuous to clean out caves in the Qerechukh mountain used by #ISIS to hide their weapons and explosives. In the past two days, several operations were carried out,” read the tweet.
ISIS seized large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory in 2014 and declared a so-called “caliphate.” While the group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017, it still continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions.
Erbil and Baghdad have discussed establishing joint brigades to secure areas between their forces such as around Gwer. Talks stalled because of elections and a year of political wrangling to form a government, but funds for two joint brigades are included in the draft 2023 budget.
