Kurdish official: no Peshmerga recently captured

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Military officials in the Kurdistan Region denied recent media reports claiming the Islamic State (ISIS) had recently captured dozens of of Peshmerga soldiers.

Jabar Yawar, an official at the Peshmerga Ministry said the Iraqi media reports were untrue.

“There is no truth to some media reports that a group of 70 Peshmerga were captured by ISIS and then transferred to the city of Hasaka in Syria,” Yawar said, noting a previous official announcement about the number of Peshmerga causalities.

At a press conference earlier this month in Erbil, Kurdish military officials announced Peshmerga casualties at 727 dead, 3,564 wounded and 34 missing. 

In a related development and in a bid to unite Kurdish forces battling along a vast frontier, Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani ordered the Peshmerga Ministry to reorganize its troops and ban all other forces operating outside its jurisdiction.

“Any force that operates beyond the authority of the Peshmerga Ministry is unlawful and no one is allowed to form new forces outside the ministry,” Barzani wrote in a published letter to the Peshmerga Ministry.

Meanwhile, Iraqi authorities in the besieged Anbar province said that ISIS now controls close to 90 percent of the predominantly Sunni province.

In the last month alone the Iraqi army withdrew further and now almost 90 percent of the province is in ISIS hands,” members of the Anbar provincial council, Nahla Fahdawi and Fars Taha, told reporters Sunday.

Iraqi media reports last week said the jihadists had bombed civilians at an Anbar district with chlorine gas.