Two Filipinas kidnapped in Iraq released amid IS chaos

Two women from the Philippines kidnapped in eastern Iraq on Saturday have been released, the police chief of Diyala province said on Sunday

MENA

2 min read

The New Arab

09 July, 2018

Iraq has experienced some security turmoil in recent days [Getty]

Two women from the Philippines, kidnapped in eastern Iraq on Saturday, have been released, the police chief of Diyala province said on Sunday.

The women had been travelling with three others on the road between Baghdad to oil-rich Kirkuk when their car broke down, according to military sources.

As the two women waited by the side of the road after the breakdown, unknown men drove by in a yellow car and abducted them, a military source reported.

Despite their release, it is no yet clear who the kidnappers were or what their motivation was, the sources said on Saturday.

There has been an uptick in similar attacks and kidnappings by Islamic State group militants over recent weeks near the area where the women were taken.

At least eight members of the security forces were kidnapped and later murdered by militants on the same highway last month.

Last week, Iraqi forces launched a major operation against remnants of the extremist group following public anger over the organisation's murder of a group of abducted officers.

Read more: The rapid 'liberation' of Raqqa was flawed from the outset

Dubbed "Vengeance for the Martyrs", the operation will see army, special forces, police and Kurdish peshmerga fighters hunting down IS cells in the centre of the country, Iraq's Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.

Some of the abductees had appeared in a video in which IS threatened to execute them unless Baghdad released female prisoners.

The JOC statement said army, federal police, special forces, peshmerga fighters and the Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilisation Forces] paramilitary force had launched "a vast operation to clear out the region east of the Diyala-Kirkuk" highway.

The operation was being supported by the Iraqi air force and the US-led coalition that intervened against IS in Iraq and Syria after the extemists seized control of large parts of both countries in 2014.

One militant had already been killed and eight captured, the JOC said on Wednesday last week, and equipment including vehicles and bombs destroyed.

Agencies contribued to this report.