Middle East: IS prisoners reportedly executed by Kurds

"IS prisoners have been executed by Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq., said a Dutch citizen from Kurdish descent, Serdar Dosky, who is fighting with the Kurds against ISIS.  He told this to a Dutch TV reporter from the Nieuwsuur (Newshour) TV news station, when he thought the camera and mike had been turned off.

He said that wounded IS fighters were immediately excecuted . "A bullet costs only about about fifty cents he said. We just do not want to take any prisoners of war "

It was also reported that Kurdish fighters had completely destroyed the Arab city of Barzan.  Inhabitants of the village who escaped also reported Kurdish fighters gruesomely murdered many of the inhabitants as an act of revenge against IS..

The videos and pictures made by Nieuwsuur were submitted to Human Rights Watch and they have requested a full investigation.

Later in the day Dosky said his comments that were picked up were just a joke. "These kind of statements we often just make in anger about the horrors committed by IS," he said.

He also said that in reality there were no prisoners taken at all. .

Read more: original report in Dutch - PowNed : IS-gevangenen geëxecuteerd

Turkey: Erdoğan adds Barzani to Turkey’s Kurdish bid - by Murat Yetkin

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan was aiming at hitting a few birds with one stone when he planned his Diyarbakır visit over the weekend.

One of them was to bring a new impetus to his initiative, started a year ago, to open dialogue with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in pursuit of a political solution for Turkey’s Kurdish problem.

There were criticisms from the PKK and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Parliament, which share the same grassroots that the government was dragging its feet and was not coming up with a new step to reanimate the process.

Erdoğan pulled a new rabbit from his hat and said he hoped “those up in the mountains will be down and the jailhouses will be emptied” soon. That was a message to win the hearts and minds of perhaps not the PKK leadership in the Kandil Mountains of Iraq, but the Kurds whose kids are recruited by the PKK for its armed campaign, lasting over the past 30 years, with an average life expectancy of 2.5 years there. Even the “Özgür Gündem” daily, which is close to the BDP, yesterday admitted that it was something new with its “Only promises are not enough” headline.

Read more: MURAT YETKİN - Erdoğan adds Barzani to Turkey’s Kurdish bid