Captured ISIS Fighters’ Refrain: ‘I Was Only a Cook’

Captured ISIS Fighters’ Refrain: ‘I Was Only a Cook’
TURKEY IRAN Kurdish-controlled IRAQI KURDISTAN Mosul Raqqa Kirkuk Hawija ISIS-controlled Euphrates Tigris SYRIA IRAQ Baghdad Iraqi Government- controlled 100 Miles
SYRIA Kurdish-controlled IRAN IRAQI KURDISTAN Mosul Kirkuk Hawija ISIS-controlled IRAQ Tigris Euphrates Baghdad Iraqi Government- controlled 100 Miles OCT. 1, 2017
Kurdish officials were anxious to show that they were not mistreating the arrivals.
"We will have his name, we’ll know all about him." A few miles away, on the pesh merga front lines with Islamic State positions in the Hawija
area at a village called Ala Ghera, Kurdish forces on Sunday were receiving a stream of unarmed young men, with women and children.
According to Iraqi Kurdish officials in Kirkuk, 90 percent of these men are suspected of having been Islamic State fighters — including some who may have committed beheadings
and other atrocities — and they are being aggressively interrogated.
While most of the men denied they had been Islamic State fighters, most of the women routinely
admitted they were from Islamic State families, according to the female Kurdish soldiers.
" he added, "they can have any help from our side." Mr. Kirkuki said the Islamic State fighters, most of them Iraqi Sunnis, are fleeing toward Kurdish
lines for fear of the Shia militias, which have committed extrajudicial executions, sometimes shared on social media. that If they need it,
1, 2017
KIRKUK, Iraq — Thousands of civilians fleeing the Iraqi military’s push to evict the Islamic State from its last major urban stronghold in Iraq now include hundreds of suspected fighters for the extremist group, dirty
and disheveled, who arrive at checkpoints claiming innocence and begging for mercy.