Shafaq News / Eyewitnesses said on Thursday that ISIS militants set fire to the high mountains of "Qarachogh " mountain range near Erbil governorate, the capital of Kurdistan Region.

Witnesses said that members of ISIS organization burned weeds at dawn today in Qarachogh , to extend to some nearby villages inside Makhmour district.

Activists circulated a picture of the fire, as shown above.

This is the second time in a week that the organization has burnt the Qarachogh Heights, where a responsible security source and eyewitnesses said on Tuesday that the fires spread to the center of the villages of " Qarachogh ", "Birwad" and "Swan", and residents rushed through the loudspeakers of the Great Mosque asking for help to put out the fires.

Makhmour district is 60 km away from Erbil city as it includes sub-districts of (Dibkeha, Garaj, Kandinah and Al-Kwer).

Makhmour district lies precisely between the four governorates in Iraq and the governorates are Erbil, Kirkuk, Nineveh and Salahuddin  Governorate.

As a matter of fact Makhmour is considered one of the most fertile areas in terms of agriculture, especially seasonal agriculture, such as barley and wheat, and the majority of people work on agriculture and livestock .

The ethnic nature of Makhmour consists of the Kurdish and Arab nationalities, and the overwhelming majority of the population is Kurds, where they are 95% of the population.

The former regime cut off Makhmour district from Erbil governorate and followed it in Nineveh governorate after 1991 to make the district a disputed issue between Erbil and Baghdad.

In Makhmour district there is a “Makhmour camp for refugees", which houses thousands of Turkish Kurds, who fled clashes between the PKK and the Turkish government in 1990.

It is noteworthy that the Iraqi forces extended their control over the district after the events of October 16, 2017 in the military campaign launched by the federal government after the independence referendum conducted by Kurdistan Region.