Shafaq News / The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) renewed its demands on Tuesday to take over the security file in Khanaqin area by the army and Peshmerga.

The areas around Khanaqin witnessed three armed attacks as kidnapping and killing of a farmer with one of his relatives, and the kidnapping of another farmer on the outskirts of Jabara sub-district, in addition to killing a man with his wife and burning their car in "Al-Tarifa", village west of Khanaqin.

PUK member and a member of the dissolved Diyala Council, Zahid al-Dalawi told Shafaq News Agency that the escalation of terrorist incidents in the vicinity of Khanaqin is an evidence of the weakness of the security forces and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in containing the terrorist threat of Islamic State (ISIS) and the presence of a security defect that requires serious and urgent treatment by the security authorities in order to preserve the lives of civilians and farmers who are now threatened to loss   their lives or agricultural fields in several areas of Khanaqin area.

Al-Dalawi demanded that the security file should be taken over by the combined forces of the Iraqi army and Peshmerga and take advantage of Peshmerga security experience in the vicinity of Khanaqin that managed to maintain security since the fall of the previous regime until the events of October 2017 that caused the withdrawal of Peshmerga and left security gaps and voids that allowed the ISIS to move and implement plans targeting civilians and their private property.

The withdrawal of Peshmerga from Khanaqin and its environs in 2017 caused a vast security vacuum, escalation of attacks and a decline in the security situation in an unprecedented way, while security statistics confirmed the conversion of 84 villages in the vicinity of Khanaqin to areas lost by security and vulnerable to infiltration and transportation of terrorist elements coming from Hamrin hills and Kirkuk and Salahuddin provinces.