Daesh recruiting women for terrorist attacks, Iraqi intelligence service warns

Iraq’s state-owned and Arabic-language al-Sabah newspaper, quoting head of the Intelligence and Counter Terrorism Department at the Interior Ministry, Abu Ali al-Basri, as saying, reported on Sunday that the terrorists had allowed women to increasingly participate in acts of terror.

Daesh has alleged that the recruitment of women is in line with planning bombings in several countries, Basri added.

“Many of the recruited women have been transferred from Syria to several other states, including Sudan before the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir,” he said.

Basri further noted that the Iraqi intelligence service had managed to penetrate into Daesh, which has apparently led to the collapse and fragmentation of the terror group.

Back in July 2017, Iraq’s Arabic-language al-Mawsleya television network published the chilling footage of a Daesh female bomber cradling a baby in her arms seconds before she blows herself and the child up.

The woman was fleeing the strategic northern city of Mosul, which served as the former de facto capital of the Takfiris in Iraq, with her child.

She attempted to detonate an explosives vest hidden under her clothes as she passed the soldiers who were flushing out Daesh militants from their last main urban bastion in the country, but it failed to go off immediately and exploded some distance from the troops.

A number of civilians and two Iraqi soldiers sustained injuries in the explosion, but the woman and the child were the only ones to die.

Iraq declared the end of military operations against Daesh in the country on December 9, 2017. On July 10 that year, former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had formally declared victory over Daesh in Mosul.

In the run-up to Mosul’s liberation, Iraqi army soldiers and voluntary Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters had made sweeping gains against Daesh.

Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January 2017 after 100 days of fighting, and launched the battle in the west on February 19 last year.

The second-in-command of the Joint Operations Command (JOC), Lieutenant General Abdul Amir Rasheed Yarallah, said in a statement on July 20 that Iraqi military forces had launched the second phase of a major operation to hunt down Daesh remnants north of Baghdad and areas nearby.

The statement noted that the offensive aims to “to beef up security and stability in areas north of Baghdad and surrounding areas in the provinces of Diyala, Salahuddin and Anbar.”

It said that units from the Baghdad Operations Command, command operations from Diyala, Samarra and Anbar, the Federal Police Command, rapid response teams, voluntary Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters and the special forces regiment of the Operations Department of the Chief of Staff of the Army as well as the Special Task Force of the Directorate of Military Intelligence were participating in the offensive.

19 villages north of Baghdad purged of Daesh terroristsIraqi army forces and Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters have purged 19 villages north of Baghdad of Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

Iraq’s army and the voluntary forces began the first phase of the Will of Victory Operation early on July 7, the military said in a statement, adding that the operation would last several days and was aimed at securing the province of Anbar and the central and northern regions of Salahuddin and Nineveh.