At least four people were killed, and one were wounded in recent violence:

The Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency released a video in which militants executed two people they referred to as “election advocators.” The video was released on April 22, and the agency claimed the pair was from Tarmiya.

Gunmen killed one person and wounded another in Baaj.

Also in Tarmiya, a suicide bomber was killed.

Turkish clashes with the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.) along the border forced villagers to flee their homes.
• Five Foreign Women Condemned to Death in Iraqi Court; Four Killed in Iraq – April 26th, 2018
• Iraqi Forces Kill 40 Militants in and Near Syria; 20 Found in Mass Grave in Mosul – April 22nd, 2018 </s> (Reuters) - Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency released a video on Friday showing what they said was Islamic State militants shooting “two advocators” for next month’s Iraqi parliamentary elections in the town of al-Tarmiyah, in the Salah al-Din governorate north of Baghdad.

Islamic State said earlier this week that it would attack polling stations in Iraq during parliamentary elections next month and that anyone who participated in the vote would be considered an infidel.

In an audio message released on April 22, the militant group’s spokesman accused Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government of being a proxy of Iran and warned that anyone who runs or votes in the May 12 election would be targeted.

Iraqi officials have said polling stations will be well protected.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory in December over Islamic State, which seized a third of Iraq in 2014, but the hardline Sunni militants have reverted to insurgency tactics following the crumbling of their self-declared caliphate. </s> Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – At least 22 Iraqi people were killed and wounded in a random shooting spree in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in the latest of several terrorist attacks against civilians in this war-torn country.

“The attack occurred late on Tuesday when unidentified gunmen randomly opened fire at civilians in a remote village in Baghdad’s al-Tarmia district, leaving eight dead and 14 others wounded,” a security source told Alghad Press Wednesday.

“The troops immediately rushed to the shooting scene and sealed off all entrances and exits of the district,” the source noted. “A manhunt was launched in search of the attackers, who fled the scene after the shooting.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi security media council denied in a statement all reports on the spread of terrorist gangs in al-Tarmia, stressing that the district is fully under the control of security forces.

The Iraqi capital has seen almost daily bombings and armed attacks against security members, paramilitary troops and civilians since the Iraqi government launched a wide-scale campaign to retake Islamic State-occupied areas in 2016.

Though most of the daily bombings go without a claim of responsibility, Islamic State is expected to be behind many.

Despite the group’s crushing defeat at its main havens across Iraq last December, Islamic State continues to launch sporadic attacks against troops with security reports warning that the militant group still poses a threat against stability in the country. </s> TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran executed eight men convicted over the 2017 Islamic State attack on parliament and the shrine of the Islamic Republic’s founding ayatollah, the bloodiest terror attack to strike Tehran in decades, authorities said Saturday.

The June 7, 2017 attack has so far been the only assault by the Sunni extremists inside of Shiite Iran, which has been deeply involved in the wars in Iraq and Syria where the militants once held vast territory. IS has since have been beaten back by Iranian-aided Shiite militias in Iraq, as well as by a U.S.-led coalition operating in both countries, though Iran has made other arrests involving the group in the time since.

The judiciary’s official Mizan news agency announced the executions Saturday morning, but did not say when or where they took place. The head of Tehran’s Justice Department, Gholamhossein Esmaili, told Iranian state television that authorities conducted the executions days earlier but chose not to immediately announce them, likely as a security measure.

Executions in Iran are carried out by hangings.

Mizan noted in its report that the executions came after the eight men had been tried and convicted in a trial that included both eyewitness testimony and video footage showing their involvement by providing the attackers support in the days leading up to the assault.

“These eight worked directly … in martyring and wounding a number of innocent compatriots,” Mizan said.

The news agencies on Saturday named those executed as Soleiman Mozafari, Esmail Sufi, Rahman Behrouz, Majed Mortezai, Sirous Azizi, Ayoub Esmaili, Khosro Ramezani and Osman Behrouz. Over a dozen others remain on trial over the attack.

While Iran is one of the world’s top enforcers of the death penalty, such mass executions are rare. In August 2016, human rights activists criticized Iran for carrying out the mass execution of 20 convicted Sunni militants from a group identified as Jihad and Tawhid after a six-year trial. In August 2007, Iran hanged seven men convicted of rape in Mashhad at the same time.

The June 2017 Islamic State attack killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 50. It saw gunmen carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives storm the parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress, starting an hours-long siege.

Meanwhile, gunmen and suicide bombers also struck outside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s mausoleum on Tehran’s southern outskirts. Khomeini led the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah to become Iran’s first supreme leader until his death in 1989.

The assault shocked Tehran, which largely has avoided militant attacks in the decades after the years-long tumult surrounding the Islamic Revolution. The image of a child being passed out of a window at parliament under the watch of armed security forces remains seared in the minds of many.

Iran’s security forces responded with heavy force. Authorities arrested suspected IS militants, including their wives. In August 2017, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said it detained 27 militants linked to the Islamic State group who planned to attack holy Shiite cities within the country.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard responded to the attack by launching six ballistic missiles into eastern Syria targeting IS militants. It marked the first time Iran had fired its missiles in anger since its 1980s war with Iraq.

That raised new concerns in the West about its ballistic missile program amid the unraveling of its nuclear deal with world powers. That deal is now in danger of collapse with America’s withdrawal from the accord. Economic problems, water scarcity and other woes meanwhile have led to protests in Iran.

Iran remains one of the world’s top executioners. It was second only to China in 2017 in the number of known executions carried out, conducting over 500 hangings, according to Amnesty International.

The IS executions come as controversy still swirls in Iran around the country’s mass executions of 1988 near the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Activists at the time said Iran executed as many as 5,000 people after sham trials of Communists, Kurdish separatists, political prisoners and members of an Iranian exile group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq.

Those executions represent one of the darkest moments of Iran’s post-revolution history and are still not recognized by its government.

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Islamic State releases a video showing the shooting executions of two men, said to be election "advocators" from al-Tarmiyah, Iraq.