New IS video shows Kurdish fighters in cages

THE Islamic State (IS) jihadist group released a new video yesterday purporting to show captured Kurdish peshmerga fighters paraded through Iraqi streets in cages.

  The video shows 21 captives presented as 16 peshmerga fighters, two Iraqi army officers and three policemen from Kirkuk, a city about 240 kilometres (150 miles) 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 IS fighters carrying pistols.

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

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

  The date and location is not specified in the video, but Kurdish sources told AFP it was filmed a week earlier in the main market of Hawija, an IS-held town some 50 kilometres (30 miles) 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.

  The video also features images from previous IS videos, including of the killing of Jordanian pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh, who was burned alive in a cage, and the beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians, mainly from Egypt, in Libya.

  A peshmerga commander in Kirkuk, General Hiyowa Rash, told AFP that the peshmerga hostages had been captured on January 31 “when Kurdish fighters repelled a terrorist attack by IS targeting Kirkuk.”

  IS seized swathes of Syria and Iraq last year, declaring an Islamic “caliphate” and committing widespread atrocities.