The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Daesh kidnapped 30 citizens in the strife-torn city of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers (248 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, in the early hours of Tuesday after accusing them of cooperating with units of Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
The development comes as a senior Iraqi legislator has said “sleeper cells” made up of the nation’s former military and police officers are tipping off Iraqi authorities about Daesh strategies in Mosul.
“Those patriotic groups, some operate from inside the city of Mosul and others from the areas surrounding it, are now giving us information about the military preparations being made by Daesh in order to face any attack by government forces to retake the city,” the head of Iraqi parliamentary committee on security and defense, Hakim al-Zamili, said on January 26.
He added, “We receive a lot of useful information from Mosulis who are becoming fed up with the militants and this is the reason why the [Daesh] blocked all mobile phone networks in the city.”
Daesh has threatened all Kurdish families in Mosul to leave or face death.
The residents of the areas on the southern and western edges of Mosul, which are currently controlled by Daesh, have recently discovered five mass graves containing the remains of some 320 people believed to have been killed by the terrorists.
