ISIS withdrew from the Iraqi Sunni village of Tal Ali yesterday, one of the areas near the town of Amerli. The villages were no longer defensible without Amerli, and the locals responded to ISIS pullout by burning an ISIS flag.
The militants came back today, in force, kidnapping an estimated 50 men from the village, loading them into trucks and leaving. Where they were taken remains unknown.
The villages around Amerli, just south of Kirkuk, are mostly Sunni Arabs, and many feared they would face revenge killings by the Shi’ite militias who were involved in the retaking of Amerli.
That remains a big concern, because the militias have shown a penchant for killing Sunni civilians along the frontiers on the grounds they might join ISIS. The civilians face the same problem from ISIS themselves, however, as they seem just as willing to kidnap and kill the locals in villages they don’t think they can hold outright.