In this photo from January 27, 2015, a Kurdish Peshmerga soldier stands guard, overlooking the road between Mosul and Tal Afar at the frontline of Eski Mosul. Bram Janssen, File/AP Photo
In this photo from January 27, 2015, a Kurdish Peshmerga soldier stands guard, overlooking the road between Mosul and Tal Afar at the frontline of Eski Mosul. Bram Janssen, File/AP Photo
In this photo from January 27, 2015, a Kurdish Peshmerga soldier stands guard, overlooking the road between Mosul and Tal Afar at the frontline of Eski Mosul. Bram Janssen, File/AP Photo
In this photo from January 27, 2015, a Kurdish Peshmerga soldier stands guard, overlooking the road between Mosul and Tal Afar at the frontline of Eski Mosul. Bram Janssen, File/AP Photo

New ISIL video shows Kurdish fighters paraded in cages


  • English
  • Arabic

BAGHDAD // ISIL released a new video on Sunday purporting to show captured Kurdish peshmerga fighters, army officers and policemen paraded through Iraqi streets in cages.

The footage shows 21 captives presented as 16 peshmerga fighters, two Iraqi army officers and three policemen from Kirkuk, a city about 240 kilometres north of Baghdad.

The captives, in orange jumpsuits with their heads lowered, are led to cages in a square surrounded by concrete walls and masked ISIL fighters carrying pistols.

A bearded man in a white turban warns the peshmerga against fighting ISIL.

Then the caged captives are shown being paraded through the streets on the back of pickup trucks, as dozens of residents and armed men look on.

The date and location is not specified in the video, but Kurdish sources said it was filmed a week earlier in the main market of Hawija, an ISIL-held town some 50 kilometres from Kirkuk.

The video does not contain any explicit threats to the captives but they are shown at the end kneeling before masked men holding automatic weapons or pistols.

General Hiyowa Rash, a peshmerga commander in Kirkuk, said the Kurdish hostages had been captured on January 31.

* Agence France-Presse