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Baghdad Iraqi Sheikh Naim al-Gaood was awakened before dawn Thursday, with the grim news that Islamic State fighters had launched a fresh attack on his Sunni tribal area 120 miles northwest of Baghdad.

By nightfall, outmanned and outgunned by Islamic State (IS) forces, and with very little American or Iraqi government support, Mr. Gaoods Albu Nimr tribe had lost control of 15 villages and seen dozens of its members taken prisoner.

The death of five more Albu Nimr fighters brought the tribes death toll this year to 744, he says, which includes some 500 slaughtered by IS in late October and early November.

That massacre was taken to be a clear message to Iraqs embattled Sunni tribal leaders not to oppose the IS jihadists as they fight back against a growing array of adversaries seeking to undo the lightning gains of spring and summer.

In a final humiliation Thursday, IS sent Gaood a text message: We will raise our flag upon your noses.

As Sunni tribes have been forced to choose sides pro-IS or anti-IS, with many shades of gray in between new divisions have brought accumulating blood feuds and a scale of slaughter in Anbar Province that is tearing at Iraqs Sunni social fabric like never before.

Local leaders say IS intimidation is undermining the ability of any tribe to fight back, by using sleeper cells and systematic cleansing of anti-IS figures within the tribe.

The result is that IS is proving much more difficult for the tribes to take on than was Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), whomhome-grown Sunni groupsfought during theSunni Awakening of 2006-2008 with support from the US.

The IS considers us agents of the Americans, because we refuse all the terrorists, says Gaood. Every day we are bleeding and dying, and need support with weapons. If there is no support we will stop fighting [IS]. We have no equipment for another battle; there is even a shortage of food.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that more than 1,000 US airstrikes had halted IS momentum in Iraq and Syria, where the jihadist group has declared an Islamic caliphate across the one-third of those countries that it controls.

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In Iraq, Sunni tribes pay heavy toll for joining fight against Islamic State