MOSCOW (Sputnik) — About 1,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters lost their lives in fighting against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in northern Iraq since June 2014, a senior security official said Wednesday.
“At least 999 peshmerga troops lost their lives and 4,596 have been injured since June 10, when Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [IS] militants stormed the northern province of Mosul,” Jabbar Yawar, secretary-general of the ministry of Peshmerga fighters, was quoted as saying by the Anadolu Agency.
The Kurdish militia in Iraq, known as the Peshmerga, has been fighting IS militants on the ground on a regular basis. Their efforts have been backed by airstrikes performed by the US-led international coalition on IS targets in Iraq and Syria.
The IS group began fighting the Syrian government in 2012. The extremists later expanded their operations to Iraq, declaring a caliphate on territories under their control.
