After the negotiations between the leaders of the revolution and the government headed towards failure, the signs of the resumption of the war appeared in the behavior and actions of the Ba'athist government led by Abdul Salam Arif. The headquarters of the regional committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the city of Erbil was evacuated, and they established a base on Mount Qarachogh in the Makhmur-Kandinawa area, where hundreds of people joined them. The Iraqi government was also preparing for an attack on Kurdistan as early as mid-April 1963, and in June, its military forces, supported by Arab Bedouin mercenaries (Jash), began attacking, raiding, arresting, and chasing the Kurds.
The Peshmerga forces stationed on Mount Qarachogh were threatened by the Iraqi Army on one hand, and on the other hand, the people of Makhmur were constantly informing them that they were always under the threat of arrest and killing by the government's National Guard, who had resorted to looting and seizing the property of the people of most villages. Furthermore, arrests, torture, and throwing people into prison by the National Guard had spread, and it had even reached the point where they were harassing women by the aforementioned force. To help them and not accept this oppression and harassment and to drive it away from them, the Peshmerga forces formed a partisan detachment and set an ambush for the Makhmur National Guard between Gwer and Makhmur, killing 4 of their gunmen and seizing their weapons.
After that battle, the National Guard, led by Sheikh Anash and Muhammad Shahada, along with a large force of police and soldiers numbering nearly 800, supported by tanks, artillery, and several military vehicles, launched an attack on Qarachogh and the village of Talkhem from several directions on the dawn of June 6, 1963. One force moved from the north via the Erbil-Dibaga road towards Makhmur to Bazarga, another force from the south of the border from Kirkuk via the Dibs-Dibaga road towards the village of Suleiman Bakhsh, and another force from the west, which had a company of tanks with them, went to the village of Sargaran near Mount Qarachogh so that no force could enter the mountain and defend it.
At 7:30 AM on June 6, in the village of Talkhem at the foot of Mount Qarachogh on both the Talkhem and Kilespi hills, the Peshmerga and the villagers resisted the government forces. A fierce battle took place between the attacking force and the defending force, which continued until one o'clock in the afternoon. As a result, the government forces were defeated, suffering heavy losses consisting of 12 dead soldiers and National Guardsmen and a number of wounded, along with the seizure of a vehicle and a radio device. Among the Peshmerga forces, there were four Martyrs, and among the village residents, 7 people were also Martyrs, whose profession was farming.
After the Peshmerga and the villagers defeated the attack, the government forces, in their retreat from the borders of Dibaga and Makhmur, arrested many innocent citizens on the plains of all roads and dragged them along with them.
Sources:1- Khurshid Shira, Struggle and Blood, Memoirs of the Years of Peshmerga Struggle, Third Edition, Erbil, 2015.
2- Khoshawi Ali Kanyelnji, Memoirs of Aziz Qazi Hamad Surchi, Daneshfar Printing House, Erbil, 2023.
3- Sayid Kaka, Memoirs of a Peshmerga, Ministry of Culture Printing House, First Edition, 1997.
4- Masoud Barzani, Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Volume Three, Part One, The September Revolution 1961-1975, First Edition 2004.
5- Ari Karim, Several Living Pages in the September Revolution, Khabat Printing House, Duhok 1999.