Three killed in ISIS attacks in Iraq

On Tuesday, ISIS attacked two locations in the province of Diyala in Iraq. According to the Diyala police, a member of the Iraqi intelligence service was shot dead by an ISIS sniper in the settlement of al-Abbara near Baquba. In another ISIS attack on a residential house in the village of Uctepe, about 115 kilometres northeast of Baquba, two brothers were killed. The security forces have launched a manhunt in the areas concerned.

In recent months, ISIS has increased its activities in Iraq, Syria and Rojava. The large-scale ISIS attack on the Sina prison in Hesekê in northern Syria represented the peak of current ISIS activities so far.

Parts of the Diyala district have a Kurdish majority and are attributed to South Kurdistan. They are thus disputed between Iraq and South Kurdistan. The population of the Baquba sub-district is roughly equally divided between Kurdish and Arab Sunni. Furthermore, there are Shiite, Turkmen and Assyrian-Syriac population shares. Various international powers, such as Turkey, try to play off the respective population groups against others. ISIS is also moving in this direction and is particularly active in Diyala and Baquba.