PMF repels ISIS attack on surveillance camera north of Hawija

KIRKUK — A Popular Mobilization Forces unit repelled an Islamic State group attack Thursday evening in the Danadish area north of Hawija district in Kirkuk governorate, the PMF media office said.

ISIS militants targeted a thermal camera in the area before fleeing, the statement said. No deaths or injuries were reported.

On Oct. 6, the 2nd Battalion of the PMF’s 61st Brigade came under attack in the Hawija sector, with assailants targeting thermal surveillance cameras, and PMF forces pursued the attackers.

The Danadish area has been hit repeatedly this month. Suspected ISIS militants attacked a Federal Police post in the area’s Burghliya village on Oct. 5, killing an officer and wounding four others, and security forces killed one suspected militant after a second attack on the same post on Oct. 10.

On Oct. 14, an Iraqi Army brigadier general and a warrant officer were killed by an explosive device left at a bombed ISIS hideout in Kirkuk, a day after Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi ordered the armed forces to their highest level of combat readiness.

The Islamic State group carried out 21 documented attacks in Iraq between July 1 and Oct. 14, more than half of them in Kirkuk governorate, according to an investigation by the fact-checking platform Sahih Iraq. An unnamed specialist in militant groups quoted in the report attributed the concentration of attacks in Kirkuk to its rugged terrain, high ground and caves linked to the Hamrin Mountains, which offer hiding places and routes into Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Salah al-Din, Diyala and Nineveh.

Zaidi formally declared the end of the U.S.-led coalition’s mission on Sept. 30, saying Iraq now takes full responsibility for its security, and the last U.S. and coalition forces left Erbil Air Base that day. The Islamic State group seized large parts of northern and western Iraq in 2014 and was territorially defeated in 2017, and has since operated through sleeper cells and small units, particularly in desert and rural areas.