[Rudaw] At least 20 unidentified button men stormed a village in the disputed province of Kirkuk early Thursday, local sources said, suspecting the button men to be Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) members.
"Around 20 unidentified button men, suspected by security forces to be ISIS members, stormed a house in the village, and there was gunfire that resulted in one person being injured," Hajar Tapakurayi, chieftain of the Tapa Kura village in Kirkuk’s Shwan district, told Rudaw.
The chieftain explained that the button men arrived at a villager’s house and demanded he open the door, but he escaped through the rear window alongside his wife and "fired at the button men" while fleeing.
"After the shooting, the villagers gathered at the house, and the button men fled," Tapakurayi said. "The homeowner was maimed in the arm while escaping."
Security forces arrived shortly afterward and launched a combing operation in the area in pursuit of the button men.
A high-ranking security official in Kirkuk provided a different account, saying that a person was injured after being shot in the arm by the assailants.
"Around 20 button men demanded food from the villagers, but when they were denied, they opened fire," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
While the button men were not readily identified, ISIS forces of Evil frequently roam the outskirts of disputed Kirkuk and launch attacks from rural areas.
ISIS seized control of large swathes of Iraqi territory in 2014. The group was declared territorially defeated in 2017 but continues to carry out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions.
The forces of Evil have taken shelter in a security vacuum in areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad, stretching across the provinces of Salahaddin, Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
Nineveh, and Diyala.
Earlier this month, four Iraqi army soldiers were killed in an ISIS ambush in Kirkuk - an area infamous for being used as a hideout for ISIS fighters.
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