Zaidi orders inquiry and compensation over Kirkuk raid that killed two teenagers

KIRKUK — Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has sent a high-level committee to Kirkuk to investigate the Counter-Terrorism Service raid in Altun Kupri on Sept. 27, giving it 72 hours to establish responsibility and ordering compensation for the families of those killed before its findings are in, Kirkuk Operations Commander Maj. Gen. Muad Baday Faraj said Wednesday.

Anyone found at fault will be referred to the courts regardless of rank, Baday said. The prime minister’s office also agreed to compensate the families for material and non-material losses and to pay for businesses damaged in the operation, said Kirkuk’s first deputy governor, Rebwar Taha, with the Altun Kupri subdistrict administration assessing the property damage.

Local officials told investigators there had been disorder in the shooting and that counter-terrorism operations required more than opening fire, Taha said, repeating that local authorities had not been told in advance that the force was entering Altun Kupri. The committee met officials on the ground and planned to visit the victims’ families. Taha said he expected the findings to reach the prime minister on Wednesday, sooner than the 72 hours Baday described.

Two local teenagers, Murad Zana, 14, and Mohammed Hemn Rahman, 15, were killed in the operation. Rahman’s family searched for three days before being told his body was at Azadi Hospital, and has accused security forces of replacing his identity card with one belonging to an ISIS member and placing a handgun with him. The Counter-Terrorism Service had not addressed those allegations publicly as of Tuesday.

The service and the Security Media Cell said on the day that forces acting on judicial orders and intelligence had confronted a three-member ISIS cell around a supermarket, killing two militants wearing explosive belts and wounding and arresting a third described as their driver, with two service personnel injured. Mazen Gharib, a member of parliament’s Security and Defence Committee, said the two identified as militants were local civilians with no link to the group and called the operation “not precise.” Taha said on Tuesday that “it appears there was indiscriminate shooting” and that two children had been caught up in it alongside militants who were killed. The Kurdish bloc in the Kirkuk Provincial Council called for a “responsible and transparent clarification.”

Whether Zana and Rahman were the two people initially described as militants, or were killed separately in the same operation, remains unresolved.