Talk of Israeli reoccupation of Gaza raises questions of legal obligations and responsibilities

Special An Israeli tank crossing the border into the Gaza strip amid ongoing battles between Israeli forces and Hamas. Gaza’s possible return to Israeli control raises questions about what responsibilities occupying power would have. (AFP)
An Israeli tank crossing the border into the Gaza strip amid ongoing battles between Israeli forces and Hamas. Gaza’s possible return to Israeli control raises questions about what responsibilities occupying power would have. (AFP)
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Updated 19 November 2023
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Talk of Israeli reoccupation of Gaza raises questions of legal obligations and responsibilities

Talk of Israeli reoccupation of Gaza raises questions of legal obligations and responsibilities
  • More than a month since it launched military offensive, Israel seen to be lacking coherent postwar policy
  • Under international humanitarian law, an occupying power is obligated to intervene in civilian governance

LONDON: Israel has left open the prospect of its reoccupation of the Gaza Strip after the anticipated defeat of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, claiming it will be responsible for finding a civilian administration to take over the Palestinian territory.

The prospect of a return to direct Israeli administration, however, raises a host of questions about what obligations and responsibilities it would have as an occupying power, given Gaza’s unique characteristics in relation to international law.

More than a month since the fighting began, Israel still lacks a coherent post-conflict policy for Gaza, with the government facing down far-right politicians’ provocations for Palestinian expulsion while flip-flopping on its own intentions.

Having early in the conflict told ABC News that Israel would have “overall security responsibility … for an indefinite period” over the Palestinian enclave, a strong reproach from the US caused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to flip, telling Fox News just days later that occupation was, in fact, not the intention.

Rather, he said the plan was to “demilitarize, deradicalize, and rebuild” the Gaza Strip while holding responsibility for finding a “civilian government” to manage the territory, leaving the door ajar for an interim occupation.

Certainly, this is where experts see the situation heading.




Palestinians with their belongings flee to safer areas in Gaza City after Israeli air strikes, on October 13, 2023. (AFP)

Writing in The Conversation earlier this month, Durham University peace and security studies lecturer Rob Geist Pinfold said he expects a replay of Israel’s previous “diverse occupations to date.”

In practice, he said, Israel would likely move to “indefinitely” occupy parts of Gaza and seek “to eschew responsibility for civilian governance elsewhere in the territory.”

While it may seek to avoid responsibility, under international humanitarian law, Israel could nonetheless find itself obligated to intervene in civilian governance.

Eugenie Duss, a research fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, told Arab News the law of belligerent occupation is designed to allow civilians to continue their lives “as normally as possible.”

As such, she said, the existing local system must ensure provision of food, health services, hygiene, spiritual assistance and education.

“However, if the needs of the local population cannot be thus satisfied, the occupying power must itself provide goods and services while respecting local traditions and sensitivities,” she said.

“If it still cannot satisfy the needs of the local population, the occupying power must agree to and facilitate external humanitarian assistance.”

Occupation, though, is nothing new for Gaza.




sraeli soldiers shoot at stone-throwing Palestinian teenagers in Khan Younes in the Gaza Strip during clashes in October 2000. (File Photo/AFP)

Israel may have dismantled and removed its 21 settlements from the Strip in 2005 as part of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policy of disengagement, but there is something approaching consensus within the international legal community that the government retained effective control over the territory as an occupying force.

Duss said this “majority view” stems largely from Israel having retained control over Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, land border crossings, supply of civilian infrastructure, and key governmental functions such as management of the Palestinian population registry.

When pushed on this, Israel has long maintained that Gaza was not, and is not, occupied. As justification, it says the territory had not been recognized as a “high contracting party” vested with rights and obligations under international law at the time of its initial occupation in 1967.

“The International Court of Justice rejected Israel’s argument, stating that it was sufficient that Jordan and Israel (the ICJ only had to address the West Bank’s status) were, at the relevant time, parties to the conventions and engaged in an armed conflict that led to the West Bank’s occupation,” said Duss.

“It is therefore irrelevant whether occupied territory belongs to another state.”

Concurring, Emily Crawford, professor of international law at the University of Sydney, told Arab News that recognition of Palestinian statehood was immaterial. Indeed, of the 193 UN states, 138 have acknowledged Palestine as a sovereign state.

For Crawford, Palestinian accession to the Geneva and Hague conventions between 2014 and 2018 provided it with protections under international humanitarian law and rendered Israel obligated to occupy Palestinian territory per the conventions’ edicts.

Those rules are “pretty expansive and cover some fundamental principles,” said Duss.

INNUMBERS

* 12,000+ Palestinians killed in Gaza in Israeli military offensive, according to Palestinian health authorities.

* 1,200 Israelis and foreigners killed in Hamas attack on Oct. 7, according to Israeli authorities.

* 230+ People held hostage by Hamas and allied groups, according to Israeli authorities.

“Protected persons may neither be forcibly transferred or otherwise deported out of the occupied territory nor forcibly transferred within the occupied territory.

“Also, the occupying power may not transfer parts of its own population, even if they consent, into the occupied territory.”

Furthermore, protected persons in an occupied territory may only be deprived of their liberty as civilian internees for imperative security reasons, in view of a criminal trial or to serve a criminal sentence.

And for those who are detained, the law provides guarantees that they are to be treated humanely and within their own territory.

Local legislation remains applicable and local institutions must be allowed to continue to function, said Duss, with the occupying power only allowed to amend local laws in four scenarios: to protect the security of its forces; to comply with international humanitarian law; to respect its obligations under international human rights law; and where explicitly authorized by the UN Security Council.

Even private property has protections under the law. This includes property dedicated to religion, charity, education, the arts, and sciences, none of which may be confiscated, although Duss said it may be requisitioned for the needs of the occupying army.




A Palestinian woman shouts as her children search 15 April 2001 through the remains of their home destroyed by the Israeli army in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. (AFP/File Photo)

“It may be argued that the concept of property also covers both tangible and intangible interests,” said Duss.

“The destruction of private property is only permitted when rendered absolutely necessary by military operations. Movable enemy public property, including cash, that can be used for military operations may be seized as war booty.”

One question left lingering, though, concerns whether an occupation is in itself legal.

Both Crawford and Duss note that an occupation’s legality is essentially dependent upon whether it has received authorization from the UN Security Council.

If so, then an occupation can be deemed legal. As an example, Crawford noted the interim occupation of Kosovo that ran from 1999 to its declaration of independence in 2008.

Given there is widespread support for the claim that Israel has in fact occupied Palestine for more than 50 years, one is left questioning the effectiveness of this body of law.

“Is the law fit for purpose? Sort of — but only in situations where it is not a prolonged occupation,” said Crawford.

“The entirety of the law of occupation is geared toward occupation being temporary, so in situations where it is less than temporary … the system starts to strain.”

As with a lot of things in international law, she said, policing behavior is dependent upon how much the state in question plans to follow the rules. Nonetheless, she stressed there are mechanisms that third parties can use to force the occupier’s hand.




“The lesson we are taking away from the Gaza crisis is the need to go back to the two-state solution,” said Anwar Gargash, foreign policy adviser to the UAE president. (AFP)

“There is always the option of non-judicial enforcement mechanisms, like sanctions, embargoes, diplomatic pressure, as well as postbellum criminal trials or taking the question to the International Court of Justice,” said Crawford.

Many non-legal factors also contribute to respect of international humanitarian law, including routine, military interest in discipline and efficiency, public opinion, ethical and religious factors, positive reciprocity, and a desire to re-establish a durable peace, said Duss.

While the media “all too often” spotlights violations, the reality is that international humanitarian law is more often than not “respected rather than violated,” she added.

Some may scoff at the latter suggestion, with the court in the past having proved powerless, particularly if one looks at its 1986 Contras entanglement with the US, which, when ruled against, simply denied the court’s jurisdiction.

But what makes things different in the case of Gaza is the “unprecedented public attention being focused on it,” said Crawford.

“For the first time in my memory, we’re seeing widespread protests not just from Palestinian groups but from concerned Israelis and Jewish groups both in and outside Israel regarding what is taking place,” she said.

“There seems a huge groundswell against Netanyahu and the response by the Israeli government, which has been described as disproportionate, and perhaps driven by other motives than self-defense.

“In time, that may prove to be a powerful force in controlling and even ending what is taking place.”


Israel’s most wanted: the three Hamas leaders in Gaza it aims to kill

Israel’s most wanted: the three Hamas leaders in Gaza it aims to kill
Updated 53 min 45 sec ago
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Israel’s most wanted: the three Hamas leaders in Gaza it aims to kill

Israel’s most wanted: the three Hamas leaders in Gaza it aims to kill
  • Two military experts said that killing Sinwar, Deif and Issa would allow Israel to claim an important symbolic victory. But achieving even that goal would be long and costly, with no guarantee of success

GAZA: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has a poster hanging on a wall of his office in Tel Aviv, in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. It shows mugshots of hundreds of the Palestinian militant group’s commanders arranged in a pyramid.
At the bottom are Hamas’ junior field commanders. At the top is its high command, including Mohammed Deif, the shadowy mastermind of last month’s assault.
The poster has been re-printed many times after Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for Oct. 7: the faces of dead commanders marked with a cross.
But the three men topping Israel’s hit-list remain at large: Deif, the head of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades; his second in command, Marwan Issa; and Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
Hostilities resumed in Gaza on Friday after a seven-day truce brokered by Qatar collapsed. Reuters spoke to four sources in the region, familiar with Israeli thinking, who said that Israel’s offensive in Gaza was unlikely to stop until those three top Hamas commanders are dead or captured.
The seven-week-old military campaign has killed more than 15,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, stirring international outcry.
The 61-year-old Sinwar, as well as Deif and Issa, both 58, form a secretive three-man military council atop Hamas that planned and executed the Oct. 7 attack. Some 1,200 people were killed and around 240 taken hostage in that assault, the bloodiest in Israel’s 75-year history.
The three leaders are directing Hamas’ military operations and led negotiations for a prisoner-hostage swaps, possibly from bunkers beneath Gaza, three Hamas sources say.
Killing or capturing the three men will likely be a long and arduous task but might signal that Israel was close to shifting from all-out war to less intense counter insurgency operations, according to three of the senior regional sources. That does not mean that Israel’s fight against Hamas would stop.
Officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have said Israel’s objectives are the destruction of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities, bringing the hostages back, and ensuring that the area around Gaza will never be threatened by a repeat of the Oct. 7 attack. To achieve those goals, eliminating the leadership of Hamas will be essential.
“They are living on borrowed time,” Gallant told a news conference last week, indicating that Israeli intelligence agency Mossad would hunt down the militant group’s leadership anywhere in the world. The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment.
Two military experts said that killing Sinwar, Deif and Issa would allow Israel to claim an important symbolic victory. But achieving even that goal would be long and costly, with no guarantee of success.
Backed by drones and aircraft, Israeli troops have swept through less populated northern and western parts of Gaza but the hardest, and most destructive, phase of the fighting may lie ahead, military experts said.
Israeli troops have not pushed deep into Gaza City, stormed the maze of tunnels where Hamas’ command is believed to be located, or invaded the enclave’s densely populated south, they added. Some of those tunnels are believed to be around 80 meters deep, making them difficult to destroy from the air.
Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it was probably unclear to all sides, including Hamas, exactly how many of its fighters had been killed.
“If (Israel) could say we’ve killed Sinwar, we’ve killed Marwan Issa, we’ve killed Mohammed Deif, that’s a very clear, symbolic and substantive achievement,” Eisenstadt said, adding that Israel faced a dilemma.
“What if they can’t get the guys? Do they keep fighting until they get them? And what if what if they just prove elusive?“
A MORE ATTAINABLE GOAL
The Israeli military says it has destroyed around 400 tunnel shafts in northern Gaza, but that is only a small part of the network Hamas has built up over the years. At least 70 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the Gaza operation, and some 392 in total, including the Oct. 7 attacks, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.
A military officer, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, estimated roughly around 5,000 Hamas fighters had been killed – equivalent to roughly one fifth of its overall strength. Six battalions – numbering around 1,000 men each — had been significantly degraded, the officer said.
Osama Hamdan, a Lebanon-based Hamas leader, said the casualty figures were false and “Israeli propaganda” to cover its lack of military success.
One Hamas insider in Gaza, reached by phone, said that destroying the group as a military force would mean house to house combat and fighting in the warren of tunnels beneath the enclave, which would take a long time.
“If we talk about a year, we will be optimistic,” he said, adding that the Israeli death toll would rise.
President Joe Biden’s administration sees eliminating Hamas’ leadership as a far more attainable goal for Israel than the country’s stated objective of eliminating Hamas entirely, three US officials told Reuters.
While staunchly supportive of Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East, US officials worry that an open-ended conflict driven by Israel’s hope of destroying Hamas entirely would cause a heavy civilian death toll in Gaza and prolong the risk of a regional war.
The United States learned that lesson over years of battling Al-Qaeda, Daesh and other groups during a two-decade-long global war on terrorism.
Iran-backed militants, who blame the United States for Israel’s bombings in Gaza, are already targeting US troops in Iraq and Syria in wave after wave of attacks. One of the attacks last week injured eight US troops.

EXISTENTIAL THREAT
The shock and fear in Israel engendered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack may make it difficult to de-escalate the conflict.
Kobi Michael, a former head of the Palestinian desk at Israel’s Ministry for Strategic Affairs, which counters negative narratives about Israel overseas, said there is strong popular support for the war to continue as Hamas is perceived as part of a broad Iran-backed axis that poses a direct threat to the nation’s survival.
Capturing Sinwar would be an important victory but not necessarily the ultimate one, Michael said.
“Israeli society perceives itself under an existential threat and the options it sees before it are two only: To be or not to be,” he said.
The objective of the war remains to dismantle Hamas’ military and government capabilities, Michael said, which could involve a turbulent period in Gaza after the war. And the greater long-term challenge was to remove the popular appeal to Palestinians of Hamas’ fierce opposition to Israel using education and outreach, he said.
Israel regularly announces the deaths of senior Hamas battalion commanders. An Israeli military officer, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said the IDF viewed the elimination of such combat-level commanders as essential to dismantling Hamas’ military capabilities.
FAILED ASSASINATIONS
The three Hamas leaders have all escaped numerous Israeli operations to kill them. Deif in particular lives in the shadows after escaping seven assassination attempts before 2021, which cost him an eye and left him with a serious leg injury.
An Israeli air strike in 2014 killed his wife, his three-year-old daughter and seven-month-old son.
Speculation by Israeli and Palestinian sources is that the three men are hiding in the tunnels under the enclave but five sources close to their thinking say they could be anywhere within Gaza.
Sinwar, who unlike the elusive Deif and Issa has often appeared in the past at public rallies, is no longer using any electronic devices for fear the Israelis could track the signal, Hamas sources said.
Issa, known as the ‘Shadow Man’, is perhaps the least well known of the three but has been involved in many of Hamas’ major decisions of recent years, and would replace either of the two other men if they are killed or captured, Hamas sources said.
All three men were born into refugee families that had fled or been expelled in 1948 from areas in the newly created Israeli state.
And all three men have spent years in Israeli prisons. Sinwar served 22 years after being jailed in 1988 for the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinian collaborators.
He was the most senior of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners that Israel freed in 2011 in exchange for one of its soldiers, Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid five years earlier.
Like Deif, Issa’s facial features were unknown to the public until 2011 when he appeared in a group photo taken during the Shalit prisoner’s exchange, which he helped to organize.
Gerhard Conrad, a German Intelligence Agency mediator (BND) from 2009 to 2011, was among the few to have met Issa while negotiating Shalit’s prisoner swap.
“He was very meticulous and careful analyst: that’s my impression of him. He knew the files by heart,” Conrad told Al Jazeera television.
Israel has killed Hamas’ leaders in the past, including the group’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and its former leader Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantisi, assassinated in a 2004 air strike. New commanders rose to fill their ranks.
“Israel has killed Sheikh Yassin, Rantissi and others but Hamas is not over,” said Hamdan, the Lebanon-based member of the group’s politburo. “Anything might happen in this battle.”  

 


Senior UK officials discuss Gaza crisis on sidelines of COP28 in Dubai

Senior UK officials discuss Gaza crisis on sidelines of COP28 in Dubai
Updated 02 December 2023
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Senior UK officials discuss Gaza crisis on sidelines of COP28 in Dubai

Senior UK officials discuss Gaza crisis on sidelines of COP28 in Dubai

LONDON: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday met with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad, on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, Downing Street announced.

He thanked the emir for Qatar’s important role in facilitating the humanitarian pause in Gaza, which saw the release of dozens of hostages and the vital passage of further aid.

The leaders deeply regretted the collapse of the pause and reiterated the importance of ongoing efforts to secure the release of all hostages and ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need in Gaza. 

In the long term, the prime minister said “we must work toward a two-state solution which guarantees the security and prosperity of both Israelis and Palestinians.” 

He reiterated that Hamas had demonstrated that it could not be a partner for peace and could have no future in Gaza.

Sunak also met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, where he reassured him that the UK continues to press Israel on the need to adhere to international humanitarian law and contain settler violence in the West Bank. 

“The prime minister recognized the vital role Jordan has played in addressing the crisis in Gaza and the generosity they have shown in providing significant humanitarian support to Palestinian civilians, including the provision of military field hospitals,” his office said in a separate statement.

Sunak reiterated the UK’s commitment to working toward a lasting resolution to the conflict which delivers dignity, peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians. 

The leaders also confirmed the continued importance of close UK-Jordan cooperation, including on trade, defense and clean technology.

During talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Sunak reiterated the UK’s support for the humanitarian response in Gaza, with planeloads of UK aid, including warehouse facilities and forklift trucks, sent to Egypt to preposition on the border with Gaza. 

He thanked El-Sisi for Egypt’s continued efforts to get much-needed aid into Gaza and secure the release of hostages, as well as their support for the evacuation of British nationals from Gaza.

He said the UK stands ready to provide further support, recognizing that there must be no forcible displacement from Gaza and that aid must be able to reach people across the Gaza Strip. 

Sunak and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog also discussed the conflict with Hamas and the end of the humanitarian pause in Gaza earlier on Friday.

The premier “once again emphasised the need to take all possible measures to avoid civilian casualties and significantly increase the flow of aid to Gaza,” Downing Street said.

Meanwhile, King Charles III, who is also attending COP28, met with Sheikh Tamim on the sidelines of the annual summit to discuss “the friendship and cooperation relations between the two countries and peoples, as well as the means to enhance them,” the Qatar News Agency reported.

The meeting also dealt with exchanging views on the most prominent issues on the summit’s agenda, in addition to a number of developments of joint interest.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron held talks with his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman to discuss the latest developments in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as ways to reduce escalation and bring about a cease-fire.

During the meeting, Sheikh Mohammed stressed that his country, along with its mediation partners, is committed to continuing efforts to return to calm, stressing that the continued bombing of the Gaza Strip after the end of the truce complicates mediation efforts and exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged enclave.

He expressed Qatar’s firm position in condemning all forms of targeting civilians, and that killing innocent people, especially women and children, and practicing the policy of collective punishment are unacceptable, under any circumstance.

He also stressed the necessity of opening humanitarian corridors to ensure that relief and aid reach the Palestinian brothers stranded under bombardment. 


Israel launches air attack on vicinity of Damascus -Syrian state media

Israel launches air attack on vicinity of Damascus -Syrian state media
Updated 02 December 2023
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Israel launches air attack on vicinity of Damascus -Syrian state media

Israel launches air attack on vicinity of Damascus -Syrian state media

DAMASCUS: Israel launched an air attack on the vicinity of Damascus late on Friday, Syrian state media reported.

 


Inaction on Gaza amounts to ‘approval’ of killing children: UNICEF

Inaction on Gaza amounts to ‘approval’ of killing children: UNICEF
Updated 02 December 2023
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Inaction on Gaza amounts to ‘approval’ of killing children: UNICEF

Inaction on Gaza amounts to ‘approval’ of killing children: UNICEF
  • Israeli warplanes resumed bombing Gaza, sending Palestinian civilians fleeing for shelter, after a week-old truce ran out with no deal to extend it

GENEVA: UNICEF has appealed for a lasting ceasefire to be implemented in Gaza, describing inaction as “an approval of the killing of children” after a week-old truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed.
“A lasting ceasefire must be implemented,” James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, told reporters via video link from Gaza.
“Inaction at its core is an approval of the killing of children.”
The UN described the hostilities as “catastrophic” and urged parties to bring about a lasting ceasefire.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in Geneva, said the resumption of hostilities meant “hell on Earth has returned to Gaza.”
Israeli warplanes resumed bombing Gaza, sending Palestinian civilians fleeing for shelter, after a week-old truce ran out with no deal to extend it.
“The resumption of hostilities in Gaza is catastrophic,” said Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“I urge all parties and states with influence over them to redouble efforts, immediately, to ensure a ceasefire – on humanitarian and human rights grounds.”
In a post on X social media platform, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he regretted the resumption of hostilities and hoped a new pause could be established.
“The return to hostilities only shows how important it is to have a true humanitarian ceasefire,” he said.
Laerke said that the week-long truce had seen significantly larger humanitarian convoys entering densely populated Gaza, even reaching north of Wadi Gaza, which prior to the pause had received almost no supplies.
“With the resumption of war, we fear that the continuation of this (aid) is now in doubt,” he said.
“The Rafah crossing is closed as of now. We need a resumption of a humanitarian pause, not a return to war.”

 


11 civilians dead in eastern Iraq attack blamed on Daesh

11 civilians dead in eastern Iraq attack blamed on Daesh
Updated 02 December 2023
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11 civilians dead in eastern Iraq attack blamed on Daesh

11 civilians dead in eastern Iraq attack blamed on Daesh
  • About 2,500 US troops remain in Iraq as part of international efforts to prevent a resurgence of Daesh

BAGHDAD: A blast and gunfire killed at least 11 civilians in eastern Iraq, two security officials said on Friday, an attack that the provincial governor blamed on Daesh extremists.
The violence in Diyala province occurred on Thursday evening.
It targeted a minibus returning the civilians from an electoral meeting organized by a candidate from their tribe, said an Interior Ministry official.
Muthana Al-Tamimi, the governor of Diyala, which is just outside Baghdad, denounced “a cowardly operation” by Daesh.
On his Facebook page, he called on the security forces to “intensify vigilance against dormant cells” of the extremists.
IS did not immediately claim the attack in Diyala, an area where its cells remain active.

BACKGROUND

Muthana Al-Tamimi, the governor of Diyala, which is just outside Baghdad, denounced ‘a cowardly operation’ by Daesh.

After rapidly taking over large swaths of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria, Daesh saw its brutal “caliphate,” self-proclaimed in 2014, collapse under successive offensives in both countries.
Iraqi authorities declared “victory” over the extremist group at the end of 2017, but jihadist cells continue to sporadically launch attacks, particularly on military and police personnel in remote areas of central and northern Iraq.
In the Diyala unrest, at least “11 people were killed and 17 wounded in an attack carried out by an explosive device then gunfire targeting the gathering” provoked by the initial blast in Al-Omraniya village, said a second security source in Baghdad.
The Interior Ministry source said the minibus was targeted “by two homemade bombs on its return from an electoral meeting.”
Sniper fire followed, according to this source, who gave a toll of 12 civilians dead and 13 wounded.
The attack came ahead of the election on Dec. 18 of provincial councils, which in turn elect the governors.
Iraq is trying to move past four decades of war and unrest, including the overthrow 20 years ago of the dictator Saddam Hussein in a US-led invasion.
About 2,500 US troops remain in Iraq as part of international efforts to prevent a resurgence of IS.
A UN report published in July said Daesh has “between 5,000 and 7,000 members across Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic, most of whom are fighters.”