Hundreds of mourners attended funerals in a village north of Iraq’s capital Saturday for eight people killed in attacks claimed by ISIS, an AFP reporter said.
For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
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 neighbors who accused him of being an ISIS member.
An ISIS statement said those targeted on Friday had been spying for the Popular Mobilization Unit (PMU) militia, a Shia-led coalition force that played a key role in 2017 in ending the extremists’ control of swathes of Iraqi territory.
Iraq declared ISIS territorially defeated in December 2017 after a three-year fight aided by US-led coalition air strikes.
ISIS 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.
Read more:
US military denies reports of attack on Iraq’s Al-Asad airbase
Iran says US approved release of frozen Iranian assets in Iraq
Pope Francis holds first public mass of Iraq trip in Baghdad's St. Joseph church
