An attack on an Erbil government building by three young Kurds in the early hours of July 23 killed one person and wounded four members of the security forces. The attack not only revealed the increasing threat of homegrown terrorism in Iraq's Kurdistan region, but also laid bare a dangerous security fissure: Various forces tasked by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) with stopping these kinds of attacks do not share intelligence with each other.

Just after 7 a.m. on July 23, three young men who had said their early morning prayers that day walked up to the single police officer sitting on a chair in front of the Erbil government building, according to the closed-circuit TV (CCTV) footage released by the security forces afterward.

One of the young men, Rahel Mohammed, was a 16-year-old teenager, who, according to his friend, was boisterous and fun to be around. “He was smiling and joking, but after he became Salafi, he turned very religious and instead of saying hello, he would say, ‘May God forgive us,’” one of his friends told Kurdistan 24. “He was on the way to mosque 24 hours a day.”

One boy shot the police officer with a pistol, while another fired a volley of bullets using an AK-47. They are then seen sticking together inside the building, walking around not knowing exactly what to do. The young men knew how to use the guns, but their movements in the CCTV footage do not appear to show that they were professionally trained gunmen. They appear ordinary, like any other young men in the Kurdistan region, except that they were radicalized enough to launch a daring raid with the intention to kill that day. Their only victim was Mam Farhan, an old Christian man who had worked in the building since 1996 and was liked by all the people of Erbil. The young men took up arms on the top floor of the old building and fought the security forces for over six hours before they were killed.