Iraq: Shia militias abduct families from Tel Afar

Iraqi Shia militias fighting under the banner of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) have shelled the town of Tel Afar that has led to the deaths of civilians, with the PMF abducting entire families of survivors fleeing the violence, Al Jazeera has reported.

Sources inside Tel Afar confirmed that “tens of families” had yesterday fallen into the hands of the hardline Iran-backed paramilitary force, officially sanctioned by the Iraqi government, as they tried to flee PMF shelling of their town, 60 kilometres west of Daesh-held Mosul.

The families have been taken to an undisclosed location, raising fears of sectarian reprisals being committed against them by the Shia-dominated PMF.

The PMF, an official force within the Iraqi armed forces, has committed numerous atrocities against predominantly Sunni civilians since they were formed out of a collection of Iran-backed Shia militias in 2014.

International human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have repeatedly condemned the PMF and the Iraqi authorities for committing or covering up abuses, including “war crimes”.

Other families missing

The PMF have been fighting to attempt to isolate Mosul and cut off highway access to Daesh’s holdings in Syria that heads through the Yazidi area of Sinjar, further west of Tel Afar near the Iraqi-Syrian border.

According to activists, the PMF have already abducted more than 100 families from the region. There have been no further reports as to where these families are, or what the PMF has done to them.

Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, a senior Shia PMF commander and who features on the United States’ list of designated terrorists, claimed that Shia militias under his command had linked up with Kurdish Peshmerga forces near Tel Afar and had therefore cut Mosul off entirely.

In a video posted to social media, Al-Muhandis said that his forces had “succeeded in cutting off the Tel Afar-Sinjar highway” and therefore cut off Daesh’s access to Syria.

However, Brigadier Sami Al-Aridi of Iraq’s Counter Terrorism Service rejected Al-Muhandis’ assertion that Mosul was now completely surrounded from all sides, and said that Daesh was still capable of reinforcing its men in Mosul as many routes were still open to them.

Tel Afar is a town populated predominantly by the Turkmen ethnic minority, who are mainly Sunni Muslim although there was a significant Shia Turkmen population there until Daesh extremists forced them to leave in 2014.

The operation to retake Mosul from Daesh is now in its second month, and its slow pace has dampened initial optimism that Iraq’s second city could be recaptured before the end of the year.