On August 18, Major General Sirwan Barzani, Commander of the peshmerga forces in Sector Six announced that a joint operation was carried out by the peshmerga and the Iraqi Army against ISIS.

In a post on Facebook, he wrote that the operation was carried out in two villages and the forest east of a big river to clean out ISIS cells and that the operation lasted seven hours.

The operation was carried out in Sector Six in the Makhmur district, southeast of Mosul.

A security vacuum was created in areas disputed between Baghdad and Erbil in October 2017 after Iraqi forces and the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces pushed peshmerga forces out of the disputed territories after the Kurdistan Region’s September 2017 independence referendum. 

This vacuum has been exploited by ISIS militants, who use the area as a safe haven and a base from which to stage attacks.

Read More: Joint Peshmerga-Iraqi Army Operation Targets ISIS Hideouts

In recent years Kurdish peshmerga forces have carried out several joint operations with the Iraqi army against ISIS in these areas in order to prevent a resurgence of the terrorist group.

For instance, the 14th Infantry Brigade of the Kurdistan Regional Government Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs conducted a joint operation in collaboration with the Iraqi Army on July 10 near Qarachukh Mountain in Sector Six.