Terror group executed 21 captives?

BAGHDAD: In a new propaganda video, the Islamic State terror group claims to have beheaded at least 21 captured Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers in Iraq. CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of this video.
The footage, released Saturday, also purports to show the prisoners in cages and interviewed by a man holding a microphone with an IS logo on it.
Following the interview segment, the executions take place.
The video, titled “Healing the Chest of Those who Believe,” is in Kurdish with subtitles in Arabic.
It is consistent with previous executions carried out by IS.
The video shows 21 captives presented as 16 Peshmerga fighters, two Iraqi army officers and three policemen from Kirkuk, a city about 240 km north of Baghdad.
The captives, in orange jumpsuits with their heads lowered, are led to cages in a square surrounded by concrete walls and masked IS fighters carrying pistols.
A bearded man in a white turban warns the Peshmerga against fighting IS.
Then the caged captives are shown being paraded through the streets on the back of pick-up trucks, as dozens of residents and armed men look on.
The date and location is not specified in the video, but Kurdish sources told AFP it was filmed a week earlier in the main market of Hawija, an IS-held town some 50 km from Kirkuk.
The video does not contain any explicit threats to the captives but they are shown at the end kneeling before masked men holding automatic weapons or pistols.
The video also features images from previous IS videos, including of the killing of Jordanian pilot Maaz Al-Kasaasbeh, who was burned alive in a cage, and the beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians, mainly from Egypt, in Libya.
A Peshmerga commander in Kirkuk, Gen. Hiyowa Rash, told AFP that the Peshmerga hostages had been captured on Jan. 31 “when Kurdish fighters repelled a terrorist attack by IS targeting Kirkuk.”