A 13-year-old boy, the son of a school principal, has been kidnapped by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISIS, security sources told KirkukNow.
The incident occurred before 10 pm last night, Saturday, August 13, in the village of Simoud in southwestern district of Daquq, in Kirkuk Northern oil-rich province.
"The militants entered the village and blew up the house of Mukhtar (the headman)," a security source told KirkukNow on the condition of anonymity.
Hassan Abdullah Ibrahim, Mukhtar, was at home with his family at the time of the attack.
"After blowing up the house of the village Mukhtar, they kidnapped a boy named Abdullah Hassan (13)," the source added.
After blowing up the house of the village headman, they kidnapped a boy from the village
The teenager is the son of the village school principal, taken by the militants to unknown destination.
"Five militants were seen inside the village wearing military uniforms and it seems that they have deployed other militants around the village," a witness anonymously told KirkukNow.
After blowing up the governor's house and kidnapping the boy, the militants left the village and a security force was deployed in the village to track down the militants.
The village of Simoud, southwest of Daquq, is home to 25 families of Arab ethnicity.
Hassan Abdullah Ibrahim, the village headman, declined to comment on the incident.
The threats posed by ISIS militants have remarkably decreased in the current year yet lately they are regrouping in the disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil.
The incident comes just four days after three missiles hit the Iraqi army's third battalion in the Chubghan area south of Daquq at night on August 9th.
After the three missiles, a clash broke out between the army and a number of militants, who according to security forces were ISIL fighters. Two soldiers were injured in the incident.
Daquq district is located 44 km south of the center of Kirkuk province and most of its villages fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters during the war in 2014 up to 2017.
Kirkuk, located 238 kilometers north of Baghdad, is an ethnically mixed province for 1.7 million Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and Turkmen. It has long been at the center of disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil.
Kirkuk is one of the main disputed territories in addition to Diyalah and Nineveh, that a three-stage process was outlined in Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution in 2005 to put an end to the disputes over these areas between the Kurdistan Region Government KRG and Federal Iraqi government dispute, through normalization, population census and a referendum on the status of the territories.
Currently, the Iraqi army, local and federal police, Brigade 61 of Special Forces along with Shiite paramilitary of Popular Mobilization Forces PMF, are under Kirkuk joint operations’ command, an umbrella for the security forces running the security of Kirkuk province.
