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Islamic State, October 2, 2015

ISIS Barbarians Release Sickening New Video Showing Ten Kurdish Fighters Being Brutally Executed in Iraq

Original source

Daily Mail

Reciting prayers from the Koran, ten Kurdish soldiers are lined up and forced to kneel moments before being brutally decapitated by the Islamic State.

Sickening video of the executions was released by the jihadists shortly after suffering heavy losses at the hands of the Peshmerga in Iraq. The footage, shot near the terror group's stronghold of Mosul, shows the prisoners kneeling on the floor while executioners cloaked in black stand behind them with hunting knives.

The captives, dressed in orange jumpsuits, can be heard reciting passages from the Koran while one says his final prayers of Shahada – an Islamic testimony of faith.

After the men are beheaded and their placed on their bodies, an ISIS fighter warned of the 'inevitable fate' of other peshmerga prisoners still being held captive, it was reported by Kurdish news outlet Kurdaw.

The authenticity of the video could not immediately be verified but it was distributed on websites with links to the militant group.

The video was released shortly after Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq drove ISIS from more than 50 square miles of territory near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and cleared part of a highway Wednesday.

The Kurdish peshmerga fighters backed by U.S.-led airstrikes pushed the militants beyond Ghara Heights and Mount Batiwa, south of Kirkuk, and secured a stretch of a highway which connects Kirkuk to the central city of Samarra, a statement from the Kurdistan Region Security Council said.

The villages of Meziriya, Gubebe, Seda, Mohammed Khalil, Qows Kurd, Tal Ward, Khalef and Mansouria – all south of Kirkuk – were purged of militants, the statement said.

At least 10 peshmerga fighters died in the operation and another 16 were wounded, according to a senior security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief journalists.

ISIS group swept across northern Iraq in the summer of 2014 and holds roughly a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Kurdish fighters made significant advances against the militant group early this year, but their progress has stalled around areas the extremists view as strategic - particularly near the border.

The militant group has launched numerous attacks on Kirkuk in its bid to expand access to oil resources, but peshmerga fighters have managed to defend the city.

A statement from the U.S.-led coalition on Wednesday noted three airstrikes near Kirkuk over the previous day, which it said had destroyed a tactical unit, 10 rocket rails, a weapons cache, five militant vehicles and a car bomb.

Another eight airstrikes were conducted in the area around Hawijah over the same period, the statement said.