Officer’s corpse found at Mosul site of recent inter-troop disputes
Federal police members aim their weapons at a man, whom they thought was a member of Islamic State but later turned out to be mentally handicapped, during a battle with Islamic State fighters at Bab al Beed district in the old city of Mosul
REUTERS/Youssef Boudlal
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) The body of a police officer was found near an oil field south of Mosul on Saturday, a security source said on Sunday, one day after another officer’s corpse was found in the vicinity.
BasNews quoted the source saying that a lieutenant’s dead body was found with signs of gunshots in he head in al-Najma village, near an oilfield bearing the same name south of Mosul. He went missing on Friday, the source revealed.
According to the website, tensions broke out a week earlier between government troops deployed at the Qayyara floating bridge and the Popular Mobilization Forces’s Imam Ali Battalions at the area as military commanders there accused the PMF of illegally smuggling oil from the facility.
Late July, Zakariya Shawkat, an officer at the Nineveh police service, said in press statements that the government troops deactivated the bridge to cut the way on the smuggling activity.
Najma oil field contains 89 unused wells, and its oil contains a high percentage of kerosene and gas oil
PMFs were formed in 2014 based on directives from top Shia clerics to combat the Islamic State. Though they won government recognition in December, they have been surrounded with accusations of misconduct, especially violating human rights when dealing with civilians at areas liberated from IS militants.
Mr. Haider al-Abadi’s government, which has adamantly defended mobilization forces and vowed not to disband them, declared victory over the IS in Mosul last month, ending more than eight months of wide-scale operations.