Iraq's Security Media Cell reported that military and security forces kicked off on Wednesday a security operation to track down ISIS elements in areas under Kirkuk (250 km north of Baghdad).
In it's report it said the new operation comes in line with efforts to "boost security and stability in the area."
ISIS elements are active in Kirkuk and continuously carry out attacks against civilians, security and military forces in the province.
Meanwhile, a United Nations (UN) committee conducting investigations into ISIS crimes in Iraq has reported making “significant progress in finding new evidence.”
The progress made was attributed mainly to telephone data, according to a statement by the committee’s chairman.
In the fourth annual report presented on Monday to the Security Council and obtained by AFP on Tuesday, the chief investigator of the team, Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, praised the Iraqi authorities’ cooperation with his team that “allowed for recording cellular phones’ communications data” from the Iraqi companies.
The committee’s chairman clarified in his report that this cooperation allowed for collecting different data from cellular phones, subscriber identification cards and information storage used by ISIS.
He considers that these statements can accelerate the judicial investigations targeting members in the terrorist organization suspected of having committed crimes against different parties in Iraq.
In his report, the chairman specifically referred to attacks committed in August 2014 against the Yazidi minority in the Sinjar region, stressing that the investigation committee had reached “more than two million call records” and geographical location information.
The committee chairman said that thanks to financial contributions from the UK, Northern Ireland and the US, the UN investigators will be able to consider new crimes suspected of being committed against different religious sects in Iraq.
The committee, established by the UN Security Council in 2017, currently has 129 members from around the world, 49 per cent of whom are women.
According to AFP, the UN considers that the massacres committed against the Yazidis in Iraq are classified as genocide.
ISIS which was defeated in Iraq in late 2017, left more than two hundred mass graves, which may contain up to 12 thousand bodies, according to the UN.
