Families say two teens killed in Altun Kupri raid were not ISIS, as Kirkuk officials demand inquiry

KIRKUK — Kirkuk officials have called for a high-level investigation into a Counter-Terrorism Service raid in Altun Kupri on Sept. 27 after two local teenagers were reported killed, with a member of parliament’s security committee saying the two people the service identified as Islamic State militants were in fact local civilians and a family accusing security forces of planting an ISIS identity card on their son’s body.

The two dead teenagers have been named as Murad Zana, 14, and Mohammed Hemn Rahman, 15. Rahman disappeared on the night of the raid, and his family said they searched for three days before being told his body was at Azadi Hospital. “When we arrived, we discovered that his personal identity had been changed and an identity belonging to an ISIS member had been placed in the pocket of his clothes, although the young man who was killed was only 15 years old,” said Shahab Ahmed, a relative. The family said a handgun had also been placed with him, and that it has a history of service in the Peshmerga and he had no connection to the group. Ahmed Kirkuki, a member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council, also accused those responsible of changing the boy’s identity and asked Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to intervene personally.

Deputy Governor Rebwar Taha, who met Rahman’s family at the forensic medicine department, said there appeared to have been indiscriminate fire. “It appears there was indiscriminate shooting,” he said. “In addition to the terrorists being killed, the tragedy is that two children were also caught up in it.” Officials had asked Baghdad for an investigation at the highest level, he said.

Mazen Gharib, a member of parliament’s Security and Defence Committee, went further, telling 964media that the two people the Counter-Terrorism Service identified as militants were local civilians with no link to ISIS. The operation “was not precise,” he said, while stressing the committee’s support for the service, and he asked Zaidi to form an urgent investigative committee.

The Counter-Terrorism Service and Security Media Cell said on Sept. 27 that forces acting on judicial orders and intelligence had confronted a three-member cell in Altun Kupri, also known as Pirde, killing two militants wearing explosive belts and wounding and arresting a third described as their driver, with two service personnel injured. The confrontation took place around a supermarket where the suspects had taken cover. A civilian was also reported killed. The service has not responded publicly to the families’ accounts.

It remains unclear whether the two teenagers are the two people the service described as militants, or whether militants and the teenagers were killed separately in the same operation.

The subdistrict’s administrator, Abdulmutalib Najmaddin, told 964media on the day that neither his office nor local security forces had been told about the raid in advance, and that several villages in the area still had no permanent security presence despite repeated requests. A woman was killed by army mortar fire aimed at suspected ISIS members near Malha in Kirkuk the night before.