The Islamic State has posted a video on social media showing 17 caged Kurdish fighters being paraded through the streets of Iraq — evoking grim reminders of the brutal torching of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot last month by the terrorists.
In the four-minute video, the prisoners — reportedly Peshmerga forces — were clad in orange jumpsuits and shackled inside the cages,
The Daily Mail reports. The video apparently was posted late Friday.
Individual cages holding each prisoner were carried on white pickup trucks, accompanied by an ISIS terrorist waving a black flag and carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, according to the report.
Islamic State terrorists cheered as the prisoners were apparently paraded through the Hawija district near Kirkuk, located in northwest Iraq. The city is an oil-rich Kurdish stronghold about 150 miles north of Baghdad.
ISIS now has a strong presence in Kirkuk after weeks of heavy fighting, the Daily Mail reports.
Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization in London, expressed little optimism about the fate of the prisoners.
"I’m sad to say that these fighters, these Peshmerga, who have been caught by ISIS, I see relatively little hope for them, based on precedent," he told
CNN.
Neumann was referring to the brutal death of the Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kasaesbeh, 26, who was burned alive by ISIS in a video posted this month on the Internet.
U.S. and Jordanian officials confirmed the death, saying that it occurred Jan. 3.
In response, Jordan executed two jailed Iraqi terrorists, including Sajida al-Rishawi, who was sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack that killed 60 people.
The Islamist suicide attack was the worst in Jordan's history.
Neumann told CNN that the new video proves that ISIS is "desperately trying to … regain the sense of momentum they had last summer, when they were capturing a lot of towns and were having a lot of military victories.
"If you look at what's happening right now, you can see that the relatively small military victories that ISIS is making do not compare to what happened last summer," he said. "They are small victories, but yet they are still trying to regain that sense of momentum that is so important for ISIS.
"They want to attract foreign fighters. They want to keep their reputation of being this ever-expanding caliphate — and for that, they need military victories," Neumann said.
The new video comes a day after eight terrorist fighters, some wearing Iraqi Army uniforms, were killed after as many as
25 infiltrated the al-Adad air base in remote western Iraq where U.S. Marines were training Iraqi soldiers.
Some of the attackers were suicide bombers — and they were killed by Iraqi security forces guarding the base, according to Pentagon officials.
No U.S. troops were involved, and Iraqi forces suffered no casualties.
The base has been under attack by ISIS since the terrorists took over the nearby city of al-Baghdadi, about 50 miles northwest of Ramadi in Anbar province. The city is less than nine miles from the base.
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