Shocking moment Sun man stumbles across mangled ISIS corpses after heroes gunned down jihadis outside terror city
THESE gruesome images show the mangled corpses of a group of ISIS fighters killed in a clash with liberating forces near Mosul.
The dozen fighters – some with their heads half blown off – were killed by an elite unit of Kurdish fighters east of the city.
About 5,000 of ISIS’s most battle-hardened jihadis are still in Mosul, setting bombs and readying themselves for the battle.
Among them is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s tyrannical leader, it has been claimed.
The Sun Online, which arrived on the bloody scene just hours after they died and as the Kurdish fighters were burying the bodies, saw first hand how they had been killed.
Posing in front of one of the deformed extremists, one of the peshmerga explained: “You can see this one took a massive explosion to his head, and his clothes have been completely burnt off.”
Beside him is a half naked Arab fighter, and around ten meters away are two other bodies, both likely Arabs, with severe burns and multiple AK47 bullet wounds.
“This one did not fair much better, he has been hit by multiple bullets” the young fighter adds, pointing at the corpse that was only partially buried beneath the earth.
The battle, which took place the night before, involved a few dozen peshmerga and a similar number of ISIS militants.
During the firefight, Shwan, a 36-year-old veteran fighter from Erbil, and member of the unit, took out at least four of the bloodthirsty jihadists as they attempted to escape in a car.
He said: “At around 8pm last night I saw them emerging from that village. I shot them by BKC, they shot back at me and I killed them in the car.”
“I don’t know how many were inside the car, but think it was four or five,” he added.
Following the firefight the unit waited until the morning to inspect ISIS’s body count.
“At first light we came here and saw at least seven or eight ISIS were killed in last night’s battle,” the commander said as he directed the JCB to bury one of the bodies.
“We also took out a bunch of their vehicles and captured a few weapons from them,” he added.
Among the treasure trove of weapons captured were a bunch of AK47s, a BKC and some other light armaments.
The situation in the area was still volatile though; ISIS was in retreat but had regrouped in the nearby village.
“There are some ISIS fighter over there (in Kamslw) we don’t know how many, but some definitely escaped to that town,” one of the Kurdish fighters said.
The area in Nineveh Province is sparely populated; however, there are sporadic villages. Many of them have been abandoned, but some of the larger ones like Kamslw, less than one mile away over the peshmerga control ridge, has not.
When asked when they might assault the area, one of the fighters smilingly added: “I cannot give out operational details, but maybe soon. The Iraqi army is also on the other side.”
At the main checkpoint, around 40 minutes from drive from this front-line, another Kurdish fighter explained more about how Iraqi forces are co-coordinating with the Kurdish fighters.
“ISOF [Iraqi elite forces] have joined with the peshmerga at Hamdaniya,” Capitan Saman, who controls the checkpoint, said as a black Iraqi army vehicle sped by.
He adds, “It is around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from there to Mosul and they are building up forces there.”
The build up in the area, which amounts to around 30,000 peshmerga and Iraqi army units, is slowly progressing up to main target of Mosul.
“We will not be going inside the city, that is a Sunni city, but the Iraqi army will, we have agreed with them on that,” the commander adds.
Sadly, the father-of-three does have concerns, like many aid organisations have highlighted, that there could be bloodier battles up the road with higher civilian casualties.
“The Iraqi army, they can kill everything and the peshmerga are much better than them and ISIS,” he said.
Shaking his head he added: “But I am concerned. I think [the battle for Mosul] could be a humanitarian disaster.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368.