Kiwi fighting Isis killed in Iraq

A New Zealand citizen has been killed in an Islamic State rocket attack after he returned to Iraq to fight for the country's civilian army.

The Hawkes Bay family of Kadhem Chilab Abbas, 42, a refugee who settled in Napier in 2003, say he was killed instantly after a rocket attack on his car on Friday in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. The attack reportedly killed three others.

Mr Abbas' daughter Hanan Kadhem Chilab, 24, told the Herald her father had returned to Iraq in June last year to volunteer for a civilian army in the fight against the extremist Islamist group.

"He was our hero," Ms Hanan Chilab said. "He went there to save the families who were in the battlefield, women and children.

"He was just a normal New Zealander. He was our father. He had an injured leg [from a gunshot wound]. But because the president gave a call to all of the Iraqi people ... he signed up and said he wanted to go and fight against the Isis," she said.

Mr Abbas leaves behind 24 children - 12 in Iraq, 12 in New Zealand - including a five-month-old daughter he has never met. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) was unable to confirm any details about the incident yesterday, saying it had not been approached by family members.

A spokeswoman said: "Given there is no New Zealand diplomatic presence in Syria or Iraq, the ability of the Government to assist New Zealand citizens requiring consular assistance there is severely limited."

MFAT was advising against all travel to both countries.

Yesterday, in the family's bustling Napier home, a portrait of Mr Abbas stood in the living room, surrounded by burning incense. His 14 family members cried as they watched video footage of his funeral in Iraq.

Daughters Hanan Khadem Chilab and Wjdan Khadem Chilab said he was due to return to New Zealand to visit his family just two days before his death.

A relative called them early on Saturday morning to say he had been killed. It was Wjdan's 23rd birthday.

"They said to me, 'your dad's dead'. I didn't believe him," said Wjdan. "We opened the army's Facebook page and there were messages saying peace be upon him, he is martyred.

"The way he died is the thing that broke us down. His head being blown off, I don't think we'll ever be able to handle it."

Websites for the volunteer army and Basra community appear to show tributes to their father and pictures of his funeral.

The family's loss comes after New Zealand-born Karolina Dam, now living in Denmark, revealed this week her son Lukas had been killed after travelling to Syria to fight for the Islamic State.

The Government has urged New Zealanders not to join either side of the conflict in Iraq and Syria. But while it has spoken of sanctions for "foreign fighters" when they returned to New Zealand, it is not clear whether these penalties would apply to New Zealanders who fought against Isis.

Ms Hanan Chilab, a registered nurse and Arabic interpreter, said the family had feared for Mr Abbas when he left for Iraq.

"But he said he can't stay because he needs to help those women. At that time [Isis] were selling women in Mosul and Tikrit to Syria ... and killing their children.

"We thought he was going to come back because he said it's not going to be that dangerous."

A YouTube video uploaded on April 5 appears to show Mr Abbas crying at the gravesides of military cadets killed by Islamic State forces near Tikrit, in northern Iraq. His family said he returned to Basra last week and had planned to fly to New Zealand on Sunday.

Ms Hanan Chilab said she had been told by relatives in Iraq that on Friday her father was driving in a convoy of two cars when his car was struck by a rocket - believed to have been shot from Isis fighters - and caught alight.

"The second car stopped. They have only two packets of drinking bottles of water so they tried to put out the car but they couldn't because the fire was blasting. And Isis were also firing, shooting around my dad's car and the other car was trying to save my dad."

She said Mr Abbas was burned beyond recognition. Her father was a "tall, huge, muscular man", but when an 18-year-old relative placed him in a coffin his remains weighed just a few kilograms.

His wife, Jamila Abdelsadeh, and two of her sons have travelled to Iraq for the funeral, which would last several days.

Ms Hanan Chilab said the family was overcome with grief. "What fault have we done for all these children to lose their father? He was a great hero. I believe he is a New Zealand soldier, and an Iraqi soldier."

- NZ Herald

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