Two members of the Shiite paramilitary of Popular Mobilization Forces PMF were killed Wednesday by gunmen in a village of Salahaddin province while trying to collect bodies of two friends.
The incident occurred a day after that snipers of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant ISIL killed two fishermen in Lake Al-Zarka near the village of Zanjali, of Amirli sub-district in Salahaddin province.
A security source in the Amerli district of Salahaddin province told KirkukNow today the families of the two killed fishermen went with a regiment of PMF to that area in order to find the bodies of the two fishermen, "but ISIL gunmen shot them, and that resulted in the death of two fighters of Hashid (PMF)."
The two Popular Mobilization members who were killed in the attack were fighters of Lion Regiment of the PMF. As for the two people who were killed Tuesday, November 9th, while fishing, one of them was a policeman and the second was affiliated with the PMF.
"After the martyrdom of the PMF fighters this afternoon, Wednesday, a force of the 52nd Brigade of the PMF came to their aid and clashes erupted. Warplanes bombed the locations and hideouts of ISIL militants," a source in the PMF's 52nd Brigade said.
Since October 28th, ISIL militants launched 13 attacks targeting civilians, Iraqi security forces and the Peshmerga affiliated with the Kurdistan Regional Government KRG, killing 15 people.
The extremist militants of the ISIL launched four attacks Friday targeting Iraqi security forces in the disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil.
November 5th attacks targeted the Kurdish Peshmerga (fighter) forces and the Iraqi army from four directions, in which an Iraqi soldier was killed and two others were wounded.
Sleeper cells and resistant pockets of ISIS 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, Salahaddin and Erbil.
The persistence of ISIS threats comes despite the fact that the former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced in late 2017, the complete elimination of ISIS in Iraq, after nearly three years of military confrontations.
Back in 2014, ISIS took over almost one third of Iraqi territories. End of 2017, the Iraqi government declared victory and defeat of IS yet a report by the United Nations UN published early this year estimated thousands of Daesh fighters remain active across Iraq and Syria.
Statistics of the KRG Ministry of Peshmerga MOP indicated that ISIS launched 2,412 terrorist attacks in Iraq from the beginning of 2018 until the end of last October.
Amerli is one of the sub-districts of Taz Khurmatu District in Salah al-Din Governorate, and is inhabited by a mixture of Turkmen and Arabs.
