ANKARA
U.K. military personnel are training Kurdish peshmerga fighters in their war against Daesh, the chief of staff of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s forces claimed on Thursday.
Jamal Eminki told The Anadolu Agency that military experts sent by the U.K. government are training around 1,000 Christian and Ezidi peshmerga in the use of heavy weapons like Dushka heavy machine guns, Katyusha rocket launchers, anti-tank missiles plus tactics.
After a month of training the peshmerga left for combat duty.
Stating that future conflicts with Daesh will be more like “street fights” Eminki said: “That’s why special military tactics are required. This type of war is very different than the fight in plain land. The training given by military specialists from coalition forces and the U.K. government to peshmerga forces is really useful.”
After Daesh – the Arabic acronym for ISIL – attacked the Kurdish autonomous region, thousands of Iraqis have been displaced.
An international coalition led by the U.S. has been bombarding Daesh territories while providing military assistance to peshmerga forces.
Iraq has been gripped by a security vacuum since June 2014 when Daesh stormed the northern province of Mosul and declared what it called a "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.
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