Dramatic video shows US and Kurdish forces freeing Isis hostages in Iraq

Dramatic footage has emerged of Kurdish and US troops freeing almost 70 hostages from an Islamic State prison in northern Iraq.

The prisoners were believed to be facing an ‘imminent mass execution’ at the hands of the jihadist group.
The operation on Thursday also resulted in the first American combat death in Iraq since 2011. Four Iraqi troops were also wounded.
Forces launched a pre-dawn raid on an abandoned school near Hawija, which was being used as a base by senior Isis military commanders.

(Picture: Reuters)

Unconfirmed reports suggest Nema Arbid Nayef al-Jabouri, one of the group’s most senior leaders, was a target.
Instead, they freed 69 Arab Iraqis who were being held captive.
The US government said they had received pleas from Kurdish officials, who reported that hostages ‘faced imminent mass execution’.

(Picture: Reuters)

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said initial debriefs showed people had recently been killed at the compound, and the hostages would have been killed ‘in a matter of hours’.
‘Thanks to the actions of not only the Iraqi forces involved here but the US forces, lives were saved,’ he added.

(Picture: Reuters)

According to the Pentagon, five Isis militants were captured and an undisclosed number of others were killed.

It added that the raid also provided them with a mass of intelligence information.

Barack Obama’s deputy spokesman Eric Schultz said: ‘The president has been clear that our men and women who serve in uniform have a narrow mission set in that part of the world.
‘But there are nevertheless still inherent risks, and last night unfortunately we saw a very tragic example of how that still exists.’