ISIS torches village in Nineveh as MP warns of group’s growing activity

Suspected Islamic State members on Monday assaulted an Iraqi village west of Nineveh province near the Syrian border, prompting locals to flee, a security source said.

“Da’esh [ISIS] gunmen stormed the Madfa’ village” and “set fire to a number of houses in the village in search of individuals wanted by the [terrorist] organization,” the source told Kurdistan 24.

Madfa’ is part of al-Ba’aj, the westernmost district of Nineveh on the Syrian border.

The attackers “forced the residents to flee,” the source added.

The exact hours of the incident are unclear and whether security forces deployed to the village were able to facilitate the return of the villagers remains unknown.

The incident occurred hours after a representative from Nineveh issued a statement early Monday directed at Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi. In the statement, Ahmad al-Jarba, a lawmaker from Nineveh in the Iraqi Parliament, warned of growing Islamic State activity in remote communities the terrorist organization once controlled. He also called for immediate intervention to protect local civilians.

“In a strong push during the past few days and now,” Islamic State gunmen have begun “kidnapping people” and “targeting a number of villages in al-Ba’aj District,” the lawmaker stated.

Due to the inadequate number of security forces stationed in the area, the terrorist group has bolstered its presence, Jarba stressed.

“If…there is no immediate dispatch of military detachments to those areas, the scenario of 2014 will be repeated in Nineveh province,” he added, alluding to the horror locals witnessed, chief among them the Yezidi people, during the Islamic State’s onslaught in 2014.

Source: Kurdistan