Twp people killed, another injured and several towers for power transmission down in three separate attacks by Daesh militants in Kirkuk and Ninawa in the last 48 hours.
In the last hours of August 9th, a member of tribal mobilization forces, part of the Shiite paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces PMF, was killed and two others were injured in an attack by the extremist militants of so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria ISIS in Gayara, 60 km south of Mosul.
In a separate incident, several transmission towers were down by IED in the sub-district of Riyadh of Hawija district, south of Kirkuk causing power failure in some neighborhoods.
On August 8th, Daesh militants have taken five workers captive while they were digging a drilled water well in Zab sub-district of Hawija, beheaded one of them and released the four others, a security officer in Hawija anonymously told Kirkuknow.
The workers are from Diyala district.
IS militants are regrouping in the rural areas of the disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil. They are targeting Iraqi forces and civilians in the suburbs of Diyla, Kirkuk Ninawa and Erbil, leaving tens of casualties and causing material damage to power towers, oil wells, houses, cattle, orchards and vehicles of the villagers.
On August 7th, militants installed a security checkpoint near the village of Kandal of Makhmour district and managed to abduct 9 locals, four of them were freed by the security forces. Three passengers trying to escape the fake checkpoint were injured by Daesh militants’ gunfire.
The Iraqi ministry of electricity said in a statement on August 5th that 13 towers for transmission of power were damaged by the militants in 48 hours in Ninawa, Kirkuk and Salahaddin, including Kirkuk-Gayarra (in Mosul) by IED, causing damage to five towers.
The frequent attacks targeting power transmission towers in the baking summer led to complete power shutdown in some areas of Kirkuk, Diyala and Salahaddin provinces with hours of outage in other parts of those three provinces.
Guards were deployed to safeguards the 250 power towers in the province and last week a suspect was arrested while trying to detonate a power tower, the senior official added.
Iraqi Prime Minister and commander-in-chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi last Wednesday chaired a meeting of the ministerial council for national security where he ordered intensified efforts to protect power towers.
