Iraq: Daesh denies Shia militias hold Tel Afar airport

Daesh has released a video reiterating their denial that predominantly Shia militias of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) have taken Tel Afar’s airport. This comes after the PMF claimed to have captured the airport on Wednesday.

The PMF had claimed that they had managed to force Daesh to retreat from the airport six kilometres south of Tel Afar, itself 60 kilometres west of Mosul.

Spokesmen for the Iran-backed PMF said that the airport was heavily damaged by the militant group, and that they had laced it with mines and booby traps.

Daesh responded almost immediately after the PMF’s announcement, stating that they were still positioned in the airport and that they had not lost any ground to the Shia militias.

As a way to further prove their allegations that the PMF were lying about their claims to have made advances in Tel Afar, Daesh’s Amaq news agency released footage that showed its fighters walking around the airport, now in ruins after Daesh destroyed it in 2014.

The PMF had stated that they wanted to capture the airport before moving onto the city of Tel Afar in order to achieve their objectives of cutting Daesh off from retreating to nearby Syria, and also to establish a base there to prosecute further operations against Daesh in Syria itself.

Should the PMF manage to do this, it would represent an expansion of their original alleged war aims of homeland defence into an offensive war in a foreign country.

Tel Afar is home to a large ethnic Turkmen community, with just over half of the population Sunni. The Shia Turkmens were forced to leave after Daesh took over the city in 2014, and some of them have joined with the PMF seeking revenge.

Regional power Turkey has vaguely threatened a “response” should PMF fighters, allied to Iran, breach the city and begin sectarian atrocities against the Turkmen population.

The PMF has been known to have committed grave violations and abuses of human rights throughout the war against Daesh, including enforced disappearances of Sunni Arab civilians, mass executions and torture, all described as “war crimes” by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.