Da’esh uses new tactic against coalition warplanes
Peshmerga soldiers revealed Tuesday that Da’esh (IS) militants were burning tires and smoking up the skies to try and prevent international coalition jets from targeting their bases.
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) – Peshmerga forces in Kurdistan revealed today that Islamic State (IS) militants are burning tires to prevent coalition jets from targeting their bases.
“They (IS militants) burn tires to hide from coalition airstrikes. [Burning tires] creates a thick, black cloud smoke preventing coalition jets from clearly seeing their activities on the ground,” Reber Hefzula, a Peshmerga soldier stationed on the Bashiqa front, told K24.
Hefzula says the militants also create homemade, improvised weapons used in attacks against Peshmerga forces and claims he found many shells and hand grenades made from cast iron pipes.
“IS has two types of military experts: People who were members of the former Iraqi Ba’ath party, and foreign militants. Both types have expertise in creating different military techniques,” says Behram Doski, a Peshmerga commander also stationed on the Bashiqa front.
He claims that foreign fighters design most of the homemade weapons and that IS maintains weapons factories in their de facto capitals of Mosul and Raqqa “creating [artillery] shells and grenades to use against Peshmerga forces.”
Doski adds that Peshmerga forces need further military training as well as heavy weapons to become better equipped in combating IS changing military techniques.
Peshmerga control a 1,050 km (653 miles) border against IS across the length of Kurdistan and have suffered tremendous losses at the hands of Peshmerga and aerial attacks from coalition airstrikes.
Reporting by Mewan Dolamari; Editing by Judy Lelliott and Benjamin Kweskin