New ISIS video shows caged prisoners paraded in street

AFP

The Islamic State jihadist group released a new video on Sunday purporting to show captured Kurdish peshmerga fighters paraded through Iraqi streets in cages.

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 video claims to 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 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."

Meanwhile, IS-affiliated extremists have become increasingly active in unstable Libya. On Sunday, militants claimed responsibility for a bomb blast outside the Iranian ambassador's house in Libya's capital, causing minor damage to the empty building.

The Sunni extremist group considers Shiite Muslims, who make up the majority of Iran's population, as apostates. Tehran is a strong backer of both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, which are at war with the Islamic State group.

The group also claimed responsibility for suicide bombings Friday in eastern Libya that killed at least 40 people in what the group said was retaliation for Egyptian airstrikes against the extremists' aggressive new branch in North Africa.

Last week Egypt launched the airstrikes after the extremist group released a grisly video showing the beheading of several Coptic Christians it had held hostage for weeks.

Extremists loyal to the group have taken control of two Libyan cities on the Mediterranean coast, have moved toward oil facilities and are slowly infiltrating the capital, Tripoli, and the second-largest city, Benghazi.

According to a report last week in the Telegraph, the jihadist group hopes to send its forces to Libya so they can then sail across the Mediterranean posing as refugees on people trafficking vessels.