PHOTO: IS hidden car bombs in fear of coalition warplanes

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – The so-called Islamic State (IS) hid vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) under trees and bushes, a security source said on Friday.

Kurdish Peshmerga engineering team have defused a number of VBIEDs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) made by the IS in the recently liberated villages located in the east of Mosul and north of Iraq, a source from Erbil Security Directorate told Kurdistan24.

The source stated that the IS militants prepared many VBIEDs in those villages, covered their VBIEDs with mud to hid them in the forest.

“They prepared those VBIEDs to use them against Peshmerga forces, but they failed to do so,” the source continued. “Jihadists couldn’t use them because they were escaping.”

He also noted that in addition to the VBIEDs, many bombs contained tons of TNT and C4 chemical substances that were all defused by the engineering team of the Peshmerga forces.

The source refused to reveal the exact location of the defused VBIEDs due to the security and military reasons.

On August 14, Peshmerga forces launched a military operation in the east of Mosul with the support of the US-led coalition warplanes to liberate 11 villages from IS. The offensive was directly supervised by the President of the Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani.

In the two-day operation, Peshmerga successfully freed the villages and pushed IS extremists back to Mosul.

According to the Peshmerga statement, 150 square kilometers were cleared from the IS including the villages of Himera, Qariyatakh, Sitah, Tal Hamid, Qaraqash, Abkhaz, al-Hasudiya, Small Kanhash, Big Kanhash, Shanaf, Omarmandan and the Gwer-Mosul road.

The statement added that nearly 130 IS extremists were killed during the two-day offensive.

Editing by Ava Homa