BAGHDAD // Militants linked to ISIL have rounded up dozens of men from two villages in northern Iraq following a quarrel that led to the burning of the extremist group’s flag.
Two tribal sheikhs said the militants entered a mosque in the village of Al Shajara on Friday as worshippers gathered for prayers, removing flags commemorating the birth of Prophet Mohammed and hoisting their own black ISIL flag.
That prompted a quarrel between the militants and the worshippers, who later burnt the ISIL flag. The militants then snatched about 140 men from their homes in Al Shajara and from the nearby village of Al Ghariba village, both about 70 kilometres outside the northern city of Kirkuk.
The militants took the men to the centre of Hawijah, a nearby town where they have a court and a prison, in a convoy of about 30 vehicles, an intelligence officer said.
A resident of Al Shajara said that women pleaded with the ISIL militants not to harm the men. The militants said they would investigate and only punish those responsible for the flag burning in the village.
They later released about 100 of the men, while the rest remained in captivity, the tribal sheikhs said.
It is not the first time ISIL has turned to mass detentions as it seeks to quell resistance in the swathes of territory in Iraq that it has overrun since June.
In September last year the group seized 50 people in Kirkuk province after residents burnt one of their positions and flag, and 20 more the following week for allegedly forming a resistance group.
Some of those seized by ISIL have been subsequently released. But the group has also executed thousands of people in areas it controls in Iraq and Syria, sometimes in grisly beheadings it films and posts online.
ISIL now controls around a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, where it has declared an Islamic caliphate and imposed a violent form of Shariah.
The group’s advances in Iraq have sparked renewed sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. The latest incident took place on Thursday in the mostly Shiite southern city of Basra, where gunmen shot dead three Sunni clerics.
In a gesture of unity between Iraqis, prime minster Haider Al Abadi paid a visit on Friday to the hallowed Abu Hanifa Sunni mosque in Baghdad’s northern Azamiya neighbourhood and to the adjacent Shiite shrine of Imam Mousa Al Kazim, a revered 8th-century saint, during commemorations of Prophet Mohammed’s birthday.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
