Peshmarga-Army cooperation strangled the terrorists, local official says

Shafaq News/ A local official in Saladin said on Friday that the new tactics the Iraqi and Peshmerga forces pursued at the borders of Saladin, Kirkuk, and the outskirts of the Kurdistan Region successfully deterred ISIS attacks and pushed them away into more remote security vacuums.

The Deputy Commissioner of Tuz Khurmato, Hasan Zein al-Abidin, told Shafaq News Agency, "the establishment of the control headquarters in Tuz Khurmato and organizing joint preemptive security operations successfully strangled the terrorists inside their dens and forced them away into remote security vacuums to avoid being pursued."

"To cover up for their defection, ISIS operatives are trying to distract and keep the security forces busy in more open security vacuums. This allows them to relieve some pressure and seek backdoors to flee," Zein al-Abidin said on the recent attacks in Kirkuk.

The head of the district called for "replicating the experience of Tuz Khurmato in other territories to eradicate the terrorist hotspots scattered here and there and invest in the fruitful cooperation with the Peshmerga forces."

Over the past few weeks, the territory between Saladin, Kirkuk, and the Kurdistan Region was a field of large-scale security operations that forced ISIS remnants sheltering there into the security vacuums that emerged after the withdrawal of the Peshmarga forces in 2017. As a result, ISIS militants waged a series of nocturnal attacks on sites of the federal and Peshmerga forces.

Consequently, the Peshmarga forces Mobilized three brigades and launched a five-axis security operation to clear the contested territories between Baghdad and Erbil from the terrorist organization's remnants.