IRBIL (Dispatches) – An attack by Daesh terrorist on a village in northern Iraq killed at least 12 people, including a number of Kurdish forces, media reported Friday.
The attack took place late Thursday in a village in the Makhmour region, triggering a confrontation with Kurdish peshmerga forces. Among the dead were nine peshmerga and three civilians, private broadcaster Rudaw said on its website.
Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, offered condolences to the families of the dead in a statement Friday. He said Daesh has become “a real threat” in territories disputed between the Kurdish region and the federal government in Baghdad.
This requires “strong and firm cooperation between the Peshmerga, and the Iraqi army,” to stop Daesh expansion and organization.
Makhmour is located across a band of disputed territory in northern Iraq where Daesh terrorists have exploited security gaps to launch attacks.
Daesh was defeated on the battlefield in 2017 but attacks targeting Iraqi security forces remain common. The terrorists are still active through sleeper cells in many areas, especially across a band of territory in the north under dispute between federal Iraq and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.
Meanwhile, the head of a UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq said that Daesh terrorists committed crimes against humanity and war crimes at a prison in Mosul in June 2014, where at least 1,000 predominantly Shia Muslim prisoners were systematically killed.
Christian Ritscher told the UN Security Council on Thursday that evidence collected from mass graves containing the remains of victims of executions carried out at Badush Central Prison and from survivors shows detailed preparations of the attack by senior Daesh members followed by an assault on the morning of June 10 that year.
“Prisoners captured were led to sites close to the prison, separated based on their religion and humiliated,” he said. “At least 1,000 predominantly Shia prisoners were then systematically killed.”
Ritscher said the investigators’ analysis of digital, documentary, survivors and forensic evidence, including Daesh documents, has identified a number of members from the terrorist group who were responsible for the crimes.
As a result of the investigations, he said the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes committed by the Daesh group in Iraq has concluded that Daesh committed “crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, torture, enforced disappearances, persecution and other inhumane acts” at Badush prison as well as the “war crimes of willful killing, torture, inhumane treatment, and outrage upon personal dignity.”