New ISIS video depicts the beheading of Kurdish fighters
ISIS has published a video purporting to show the beheading of three Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq by Sunni militants who threatened to kill “dozens” more of those being held captive.
The six-minute video coincides with celebrations for the Kurdish New Year, showing the peshmerga fighters wearing orange jumpsuits being decapitated by three black-clad militants, all of whom spoke Kurdish.
There peshmerga fighters are partners with the U.S.-led coalition in its campaign to “degrade and destroy” the jihadi group, which stalled advancements in northern Iraq with the help of airstrikes.
“To the Muslim Kurdish people: know that our war is not with you, rather it is with those who ventured into an alliance with the Safavids and crusaders to wage war on the Muslims,” said the terrorist in the video, who then used derogatory terms to refer to Iran and the coalition respectively. Tehran has also provided assistance to the peshmerga.
Another of the militants then directly addressed Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani: “We warned you before that for every rocket you fire on those under the care of the ISIS, you will kill one of your prisoners with your own hands.”
Kurdish forces shelled inside Mosul several days ago in what the peshmerga ministry said was retaliation for an ISIS missile that landed in a vegetable market outside the regional capital of Irbil Monday.
Earlier this year, a peshmerga was beheaded by a Kurdish militant in Mosul after Grad rockets were fired into the city by the Kurds. Last month, another video was published showing captive peshmerga in cages.
ISIS has previously beheaded Western aid workers and journalists as well as domestic opponents in Syria and Iraq.
More than 1,000 peshmerga have been killed in combat with ISIS militants since they overran a third of Iraq, but several hundred Kurds have joined the other side and are fighting against their ethnic kin.
Kurdish authorities last week said they had evidence the militants had used chlorine as a chemical weapon against the peshmerga on at least one occasion.