ISIS changing tactics, threatening to strike Iraqi forces
North-Press Agency
In a new video spread by its media accounts on Saturday, the Islamic State (ISIS) vowed to carry out killings and target Iraqi government and Global Coalition forces.
In the nearly fifty-minute video, ISIS indicated that the recent military operations by Iraqi forces and the Global Coalition have not affected their activities in Iraq.
The video, titled “Slitting the Throat” is considered the first after the killing of ISIS’s leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in an operation carried out by Global Coalition forces with the assistance of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the village of Barisha in Idlib late last year.
At the beginning, the video showed old speeches by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi urging his followers to strike the infidels and target their human, economic, and logistical resources.
The video also included operations carried out by ISIS during the last period, including in several regions of Iraq.
It also showed ISIS fighters declaring loyalty and allegiance to the new leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, without showing his image or voice.
The video also showed the killing processes that ISIS used against Arab tribes in western and northern Iraq claiming the executions were due to their apostasy from Islam, as well as the use of improvised explosive devices, sniping, and armed attacks targeting Iraqi army forces and the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (a group of mostly Shi’ite Muslim militias backed by the Iraqi government).
In the video, a man speaking with an Iraqi accent threatened military operations in the Iraqi state.
It also included military operations in which ISIS militants donned Iraqi Army and police clothing, storming the homes of security forces and executing them.
The video shows the burning of agricultural fields in villages and regions in northern Iraq (according to the video), with impetus from their owners. At the end of the video, they pledged to release all of their fighters from Iraqi prisons.
At the beginning of May, French newspaper Le Monde said that about 3,000 ISIS insurgents are still active in Iraq, in conjunction with nearly daily military operations by Iraqi security forces against ISIS cells.
The newspaper stated that they had reformed their cells in the areas from which they were previously expelled, especially in northeastern Iraq, explaining that a large number of them had returned from Syria.
In the same month, Iraqi security forces arrested five ISIS sleeper agents in a security operation south the city of Mosul, after the Popular Mobilization Units announced that they thwarted an ISIS attack on Jurf al-Sakhr south of the capital Baghdad.
In April, the Iraqi Security Media Cell claimed to have arrested the official of the ISIS execution committee.
The cell stated that the Operations Command of the Samarra area tracked and ambushed him on the highway near the Dujail district, which is located 60 kilometers north Baghdad, though his name was not revealed.