Free Republic

Islamic State (IS) militants fired mortar rounds containing mustard agent at Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq, Kurdish officials say. The Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs said blood samples from about 35 fighters revealed traces of sulphur mustard. It did not say if any of the peshmerga had died as a result of the attack, or how severely they had been wounded. Mustard gas can burn skin and cause severe respiratory problems, and is banned under international law.

'SAS TROOPS armed with sniper rifles and heavy machine guns have killed at least 200 evil Islamic State (ISIS) extremists in a series of deadly raids in the past year. Soldiers from the elite fighting unit have eliminated the barbaric terrorists in war-torn Syria and Iraq by calling in air strikes, carrying out deadly ambushes and using long-range sniper fire. They have even organised groups of Peshmerga fighters - forces in Iraqi Kurdistan who are fighting the blood-thirsty terror group - into guerrilla units. In one of the most effective raids British special forces destroyed an entire 20-vehicle fuel convoy,...

Kurdish forces backed by coalition airstrikes have driven Islamic State (ISIS) militants from eight villages in northern Iraq and reclaimed an area of over 140 square kilometers (54 square miles), the U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force reports. The large-scale offensive by Peshmerga fighters began early on Wednesday morning and focused on an area west of Kirkuk. "Peshmerga fighters successfully penetrated Daesh (ISIS) defensive positions, cleared fighters, liberated eight villages, and re-established government control over approximately 140 square kilometers between Huwayjah and Kirkuk," the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement. Coalition aircraft carried out more than 50 airstrikes over...

Western-backed Kurdish fighters freed seven villages from the clasps of ISIS in northern Iraq in recent days, the U.S.-led coalition battling the militants said Friday. But the extremists still control broad swathes of land in the war-torn country, where ISIS has waged a terrifying offensive of forced religious conversions and beheadings. Bolstered by coalition airstrikes, the Peshmerga fighters wrestled back more than 200 square kilometers (80 square miles) near the town of Tuz since August 26, the Combined Joint Task Force said.

Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State (IS) jihadists in northern Iraq have reported being attacked with chemical weapons, the German defense ministry said Thursday. “We have indications that there was an attack with chemical weapons” against the Peshmerga fighters that left many suffering from “respiratory irritation,” a ministry spokesman told AFP. […] IS has previously been accused of using chlorine against Kurdish forces in Iraq. In March, the autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq said it had evidence that the jihadist group used chlorine in a car bomb attack on January 23. …

<p>A North Carolina mother of three young children has traveled to Iraq to join the Kurdish Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS terrorists.</p> <p>Samantha Johnston, 25, of Emerald Isle, N.C., is the only known American woman on the ground assisting in the fight against ISIS.</p>

ISIS is reportedly digging trenches and calling on reinforcements to prepare for a possible assault by Kurdish forces on their stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria, activists and a Kurdish official told CNN on Wednesday. ISIS moved a convoy of nearly 100 military vehicles packed with arms, ammunition and fighters from the eastern countryside of Raqqa to one of the terror group's bases within the city, Rami Abdurahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told CNN on Wednesday. The observatory is a London-based monitoring group. Fortification of the group's de-facto capital in Syria comes just a day...

Recently, the Kurdish Peshmerga won a major victory against the Islamic State group in northern Syria, taking back a town known as Tal Abyad. Amazingly, the Obama administration took credit for this hard-fought victory, even though it had next to nothing to do with it. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the Kurdish victory was “actually a direct consequence of an earlier military operation that President Obama ordered” to break the siege of the Syrian city of Kobani last fall. This laughable claim was quickly shot down by the Kurds themselves, who stated that they could have taken the town back much more...

The comments follow allegations by Iraqi Kurdish authorities that they have evidence that ISIS used chlorine gas against their peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq. PERTH - Islamic State militants have used chlorine as a weapon and are recruiting highly trained technicians in a serious bid to develop chemical weapons, Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop warned. In a speech to an international forum of nations that works to fight the spread of such weapons, Bishop said the rise of militant groups such as ISIS, also known as Daish, posed “one of the gravest security threats we face today.” “Apart from some...

ACN photo: Sister Suhama “At night we often hear gunfire. But luckily we are quite a bit away from the fighting,” Father Steven says. In fact, the town of Alqosh is only 10 miles away from the front line, where the heavily armed Kurdish Peshmerga forces and ISIS fighters are facing off.When the weather is good, you can see the Christian towns on the Nineveh Plane that are now under ISIS control. “Back there is my village Batnaya,” the Chaldean priest says, pointing in the direction of the once Christian community. “I was the last to leave Batnaya. The jihadists...

In their fight against ISIS, the Kurdish army known as Peshmerga has a secret weapon – a second-generation gunsmith so skilled he can practically turn a bucket of rusty bolts into a killing machine for the rugged, but cash-strapped, fighting force. Bakhtiar Aziz works in a dimly lit basement shop in Erbil, refurbishing guns taken from the enemy, bringing broken and even decades-old firearms back to life and helping to outfit an army as short on weapons as it is long on heart. On a recent day, he inspected an M-16A4 assault rifle badly damaged in a coalition airstrike. Pocked...

This is not the first time that Islamic State fighters have been accused of using the regionÂ’s loose chemical weapons on pro-Western forces, but this might be the most disturbing reported use of chemical agents by ISIS. The allegation that ISIS militants used chlorine gas on Kurdish soldiers in Iraq likely represents the ultimate failure of the Obama administrationÂ’s policy toward to the Syrian civil war. According to reports, Kurdish authorities have provided evidence to international investigators that indicates ISIS used low-grade chemical weapons, likely chlorine gas canisters, against Peshmerga fighters in an attack near the Syrian border in...

Last fall, Patrick Maxwell, a 29-year-old Iraq war veteran now selling real estate in this bustling city, saw something in news footage of Islamic fighters in Iraq that he never saw as an infantry Marine there: the enemy. “We patrolled every day, got shot at, mortared, hit by I.E.D.s, one of my friends was killed,” said Mr. Maxwell, a former sergeant who deployed in 2006 to Anbar Province. “But I never saw the enemy, never fired a shot.” With the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, hoisting its black flag above many Iraqi cities that United States troops...

Eight dead bodies hang from a metal frame in the Iraq's Kirkuk province in Islamic State's latest public display of barbarity. The gruesome images which emerged on social media show the men's limp bodies suspended from their feet off a tall structure in the town of Hawija. The notorious black flag used by Islamist groups like ISIS is displayed above them as horrified onlookers inspect the scene. Some of the deceased men appear to be wearing military fatigues but it is not known if they were Iraqi soldiers. An ISIS fighter believed to be Abu Al-Rahman poses triumphantly in one...

OTTAWA—Canada’s military mission in Iraq has turned deadly after Iraqi Kurdish troops fired on an approaching group of Canadian soldiers, killing one and wounding three others in a tragic mix-up. Killed in the incident was Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron, from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, based at Garrison Petawawa. The friendly-fire death marks the first Canadian fatality since the mission to battle Islamic extremists began last fall. Three other members were injured and are being treated, the military said in a statement. They were part of the group of 69 Canadian special-operations soldiers who have been in northern Iraq since...

File this report from The Daily Star of Lebanon under the category of “Yay … I Guess,” or perhaps “Two and a Half Cheers.” It’s good news that Islamic State (ISIS) forces have been pushed out of over 20 Syrian villages. The bad news is that Bashar al-Assad’s regime did most of the pushing, with an assist from Kurdish militia units. The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which does not approve of most of what it observes the Assad regime doing, said that “after three days of clashes, regime forces bolstered by fighters from Arab tribes had...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A documentary filmmaker who spent time with the Free Syrian Army said that moderate rebels are “laughing” at President Obama’s plan to arm them against the Islamic State, claiming they simply “don’t take this seriously.” Matthew VanDyke, an American filmmaker and a friend of executed journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, spoke with Fox News’s Shepard Smith about the White House’s plan to arm and train thousands of rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, a more moderate rebel group that’s friendly with the West, in order to encourage them to fight the Islamic State. VanDyke warned that removing the...

Matthew VanDyke didn't go into Libya to be in the middle of a war. The 31-year-old freelance journalist from Baltimore thought Moammar Gadhafi would be ousted from power by the time he arrived in early March. He would report on the changes sweeping the country and help friends he had met on previous visits build a new country. But VanDyke hasn't been heard from since mid-March, when he called his mother and girlfriend on a cellphone with a scratchy connection while on a truck headed from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to the town of Brega. (snip) The journalist decided...

Hollie McKay February 27, 2015 Just 12 miles north of the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, an American filmmaker and self-styled revolutionary is running a boot camp for Christians willing and able to fight for their lives and faith against the murderous Islamic terror organization. Matthew VanDyke, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who escaped a Libyan prison after going there to help overthrow Col. Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, is helping to train hundreds of long-persecuted Assyrian Christians in everything from firearms to close quarters combat. VanDyke, who founded the security contracting firm company Sons of Liberty (SOLI), is working with an unnamed...

Just 12 miles north of the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, an American filmmaker and self-styled revolutionary is running a boot camp for Christians willing and able to fight for their lives and faith against the murderous Islamic terror organization. Matthew VanDyke, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who escaped a Libyan prison after going there to help overthrow Col. Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, is helping to train hundreds of long-persecuted Assyrian Christians in everything from firearms to close quarters combat. VanDyke, who founded the security contracting firm company Sons of Liberty (SOLI), is working with an unnamed U.S. military veteran to get...