New Islamic State video shows Peshmerga being paraded through Kirkuk proving in cages...according to this Tweet from @ShirazMaher.(Photo: @ShirazMaher via Twitter)
The latest Islamic State video posted online appears to show captured Kurdish soldiers paraded in cages through crowded Iraqi streets to wild applause.
The video is less than 10 minutes long but shows what appear to be 21 Kurdish peshmerga fighters being paraded through Kirkuk in individual cages. Some are briefly interviewed in the video.
CNN, translating the inteviews, says most of those interviewed say they are from Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq with strong Kurdish ties.
"The prisoners, under duress, call on their fellow peshmerga soldiers to give up their fight against ISIS," CNN reports.
"We say to the peshmerga: Leave your jobs, or your fate will be like these, either the cage, or under the ground," a man says in Kurdish, according to CNN's translation.
The fate of the men is not shown on the video.
Shiraz Maher, a senior fellow at The International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence, tweeted that the video is "not as gory as previous vids." But asked if the prisoners were murdered, he notes that the "video ends before we see it, but I presume they were, yes."
The peshmerga are from the semi-autonomous region of Kurdish Iraq. The group opposed Saddam Hussein's regime and supported the U.S.-led effort to topple him.
Now the peshmerga are fighting to keep their region from the grips of the Islamic State, which is attempting to construct a caliphate primarily through a wide swath of Syria and Iraq.
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