Wikipedia
Hawija (; Kurdish "hawij" for wild carrot) is the centre of Al-Hawija District in the Kirkuk province of Iraq, 30 miles south of Kirkuk, and north of Baghdad.
Hawija district has approximately 450,000 inhabitants, about 98 percent of them Sunni Arabs and the rest mostly Sunni Turkmens. Most of the inhabitants live in rural areas.
During the Iraq War, U.S. and Iraqi forces experienced numerous lethal attacks in the area from Sunni insurgents. As of March 2006, the area of Hawija was considered one of the most dangerous in all of Iraq with US soldiers and the foreign press corps in Baghdad dubbing Hawija " Anbar of the North," a reference to the violence wracked province in Western Iraq.
Following the Iraq War, Hawija came into media focus on 19 April 2013, when an unprecedented amount of violence erupted. In the 2013 Hawija clashes between Sunni protesters and Iraqi Army, some 53 people were killed. Further associated violence brought the total death toll by April 27, to 215.