Mustafa Mahmoud Ahmed, head of the general hospital in al-Baaj, told Rudaw the incident took place around 10:30 am in a village in Baaj, a district in the Iraqi province of Nineveh.
“The house has been abandoned for several years; its owner left the area, and the family recently rented it to work there. This morning, while cleaning the garden, a remnant ISIS bomb exploded in one of the rooms, killing four members of the family, aged between 5 and 15,” Ahmed said.
A source from the hospital in Baaj told Rudaw the family consists of 12 people, four of the children are dead and one is severely injured. More family members are believed to be under the house's rubble - their fate is unknown.
Mohammed Kakayi, the head of the security and defense committee of the Nineveh provincial council, confirmed to Rudaw that "the bomb was a remnant of ISIS, which exploded..."
ISIS rose to power and seized control of large swathes of Iraqi territory during a brazen offensive in 2014. It was declared territorially defeated in 2017 when its so-called caliphate in the country fell to Iraqi and Kurdish fighters, supported by a US-led international coalition.
Despite its territorial defeat, the group continues to carry out hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions in several provinces, particularly in areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad, which stretch across the provinces of Salahaddin, Diyala, Kirkuk, and Nineveh.
On Thursday, the US army announced that 15 ISIS suspects were killed in a joint military operation with the Iraqi army in the western Anbar province, and an American defense official told Rudaw that seven US troops were injured in the raid.
Nahro Mohammed and Malik Mohammed contributed to this report
