IRAQI VILLAGE IN MOURNING AFTER DAESH KILLS EIGHT

Sat 13 March 2021:

Hundreds of mourners attended funerals in a village north of Iraq’s capital Saturday for eight people killed in attacks claimed by the Islamic State militants group, an AFP reporter said.

The attacks took place on Friday and killed six members of the same family, including two women, along with a lawyer and a policeman.

Witnesses said men in military uniform had carried out the three attacks on the victims’ homes in the village of Al-Bou Dor.

The Iraqi military said it was a revenge attack ordered by a village resident who had been driven out by neighbours who accused him of being an IS member.

An IS statement said those targeted on Friday had been spying for Hashed al-Shaabi, a Shiite-led coalition force that played a key role in 2017 in ending the militants’ control of swathes of Iraqi territory.

Iraq declared IS territorially defeated in December 2017 after a three-year fight aided by US-led coalition air strikes.

IS attacks in urban areas have since dramatically dropped, but Iraqi troops have continued to battle sleeper cells in the country’s mountainous and desert areas.