MOSUL, July 19: For one Iraqi lieutenant, the fight against the Islamic State group in Mosul has been a slow, methodical quest for revenge. For three years, he has hunted for two IS militants from his village who he believes killed his father. Along the way, he has shot to death detained militants after interrogating them, he acknowledges unapologetically.

And if he catches either of the men he is searching for, the lieutenant vows he will inflict on him “a slow death” and hang his body from a post in the village after forcing him to reveal where his father’s body is buried.

That sort of thirst for vengeance in the wake of military victories is fueling extrajudicial killings of suspected IS members at the hands of Iraqi security forces in and around Mosul. Videos that emerged last week showed troops in Mosul taking captured IS suspects and throwing them one by one off a high wall next to the Tigris River, then shooting their bodies below.

Speaking to The Associated Press, four Iraqi officers from three different branches of the military and security forces openly admitted that their troops killed unarmed and captured Islamic State suspects, and they defended the practice. They, like the lieutenant, spoke on condition of anonymity because they acknowledged such practices were against international law, but all those interviewed by AP said they believed the fight against IS should be exempt from such rules of war because militant rule in Iraq was so cruel.

However, the killings risk tipping Iraq back into the cycles of violence that have plagued the country for over a decade, according to Belkis Wille, Iraq researcher with Human Rights Watch. The Islamic State group was able to attract recruits in the past because of people’s anger over abuses, including arbitrary detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings, she said.

If abuses continue, “all you’re going to see is (that) young Sunni Arab men are going to want to join whatever the next extremist group looks like,” she said. Despite the military’s vows not to tolerate it, she said no soldier or commander has been held accountable for any killings.

The bloodshed reflects the deeply personal nature of the fight against IS. When the militants overran Mosul and large parts of northern and western Iraq in 2014, they specifically targeted members of the military and security forces and their families for brutal atrocities. Near Tirkrit, IS massacred some 1,700 captured military recruits and buried them in mass graves that have been uncovered since. Hundreds of policemen and soldiers in Mosul are believed to have been killed after the takeover. Militants made no attempt to hide atrocities.

Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Brig. Gen. Tahseen Ibrahim, said that authorities “have not registered any incident of revenge killing, whether carried out by security forces or residents. The situation is under full control and we will not allow such incidents to happen because this issue is very sensitive and leads to violent reactions.”

But a senior Iraqi officer said his troops regularly killed men who were said to be IS among civilians fleeing the city at screening centers in and around Mosul. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the possibility it could prompt legal repercussions.

“When an entire group of civilians tells us, ‘This man is Daesh,’ yes, we shoot him,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.

“When you’re facing a man who has killed your friends, your family, yes, sometimes the men get rough,” he added. “But for us, this is personal.”

The lieutenant said the two men who killed his father were well known in his hometown, a small village south of Mosul. He agreed to share his story with the AP because he wanted to show how personal the fight is for Iraqi troops. Two of his colleagues confirmed his version of events. The AP is not revealing the names of the men he is pursuing because there is no way to confirm independently they belonged to IS.

The lieutenant said his father was an officer in the security forces who fought al-Qaida, the predecessor to IS, in 2007, at the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence. After the Islamic State group seized the village in 2014, the tribes that were once kicked out for al-Qaida ties moved back in, and IS installed them in security and administrative positions.

According to the lieutenant, two men grabbed the lieutenant’s father outside his home. The two were among those previously expelled for al-Qaida ties, he said.

The lieutenant was away, and his neighbors told him his father had been killed and who did it. He said he was told the men boasted about it in public. IS fighters also killed the lieutenant’s uncle and more than a dozen other friends and relatives.

The lieutenant keeps an old picture of the two men on his phone. He said a handful of other troops know about his hunt and have helped him interrogate and kill IS suspects.

As Iraqi forces advanced toward the lieutenant’s village last year in the lead-up to Mosul, he began interrogating captured IS suspects.

“Most of them I just asked questions,” he said, “but for those who I knew had blood on their hands, I killed them on the spot.”

He said he has killed more than 40 militants, whether in combat or in interrogations on the sidelines of the battle. He acknowledged most were not directly responsible for his relatives’ deaths.

“I’m not selfish with my revenge, what I’m doing is for all Iraqis,” he said.

Early on in the Mosul operation, he said he learned that one of the two men was in Tal Afar, a town west of Mosul that remains in IS hands, or had fled to Syria.

In early July, as Iraqi forces pushed into Mosul’s Old City, he received a tip on the location of the second man. He said a colleague, an intelligence officer, called and said he was holding an IS suspect from the lieutenant’s home town.

“I told him don’t do anything, keep him there. I’m on my way,” the lieutenant said.

The detainee was the uncle of the lieutenant’s second target. The man was left alone with the lieutenant in a bare concrete room without a table or chair.

“I didn’t torture him. I cut the plastic handcuffs from his wrists and gave him water,” the lieutenant said. The man was elderly, with a grey beard and hair.

“He begged me not to kill him as I questioned him,” he said, smiling. “He could barely walk (he was so scared).”

Eventually, the man told the lieutenant that his second target was alive and in Mosul’s Old City.

“After I questioned him I sent him to hell,” the lieutenant said flatly. He said he shot the man with his side arm and left his body on the floor.

The first reports of revenge killings appeared within weeks of the launch of the Mosul operation last year and continued throughout. But the government and rights groups do not have an exact number.

In June, Human Rights Watch said at least 26 bodies of blindfolded and handcuffed men had been found in dumped in government-held areas in and around Mosul. A month later, HRW said it had further reports of extrajudicial killings. Wille of Human Rights Watch said it was taking place “basically everywhere that is touched by this conflict” and by every armed force involved in the fight.

The military says troops have orders to hand any captured IS over for interrogation ahead of future trial.

The lieutenant dismissed the idea of going to the courts, saying they are corrupt and suspects could bribe their way to freedom.

“I know some people believe that this kind of killing is wrong, but Daesh, they are not human beings,” he said. “I am the one who still has my humanity.”

When Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared “total victory” in Mosul last week, the lieutenant said he believed his target is still in one of the last IS pockets in the Old City.

“I hope I find him alive,” he said, “because I want to make sure he dies a slow death, not quick. I want him to tell me where my father’s body is buried, and then I want to take his body and hang it from a post in my village.”-AP

MOSUL, July 10: Iraqi forces slowly advanced on Monday to retake the last patch of ground in Mosul where Islamic State militants are holding on to a tiny sliver of the Old City, west of the Tigris River, a day after the prime minister visited the soldiers to congratulate troops on the hard-fought battle.

Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil of the Iraqi special forces said that said even after his men, closely backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, retake the last areas of IS control, clearing operations in Mosul will continue to rid the city of sleeper cells and booby-trapped explosives.

Iraqi commanders say they believe hundreds of IS fighters remain inside the neighborhood and are using their families — including women and children — as human shields in a fight to the death that has slowed recent Iraqi gains to a crawl.

“There’s no accurate estimate for the Daesh fighters and the families who are stuck there,” said Lt. Gen. Abdul-Ghani al-Asadi, a senior special forces commander, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

He said most civilians left in the Old City are believed to be IS family members. “But we will not accuse them of anything,” he continued, “if they don’t carry weapons they are civilians.”

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fell to the Islamic State group in 2014, when IS blitzed across much of northwestern Iraq and subsequently declared a caliphate on the territory held by extremists in Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul last October and by late January, the eastern half of the city — which is roughly divided by the Tigris onto a western and eastern section — was declared liberated. The push into western Mosul began the following month and in June, Iraqi forces started the weeks-long push through the Old City, Mosul’s most congested district.

On Sunday, Iraqi soldiers celebrated recent gains, though Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi stopped short of declaring an outright victory.

On his visit to Mosul, al-Abadi met field commanders, kissed babies and toured a reopened market. But airstrikes and sniper fire continued amid the revelry as the extremists stubbornly held on to a small area in the Old City.

Over the nearly nine-month campaign, Iraqi forces have reduced the IS hold on Mosul to less than a square kilometer (less than a mile) of territory.

“We are glad to see normal life return for the citizens,” al-Abadi said, according to a statement from his office. “This is the result of the sacrifices of the (country’s) heroic fighters.”

A few kilometers away, special forces commanders climbed over mounds of rubble on the edge of the Old City to plant an Iraqi flag on the western bank of the Tigris, marking weeks of hard-fought gains.

The fierce battle for Mosul has killed thousands and displaced more than 897,000 people. Last month, as Iraqi troops closed in on the Old City, the militants destroyed the al-Nuri Mosque and its famous leaning minaret to deny the Iraqi forces a symbolic triumph.