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A crack unit of female soldiers is on the trail of Islamic State killers who have captured 3,000 innocent women in Iraq.

Thousands of non-Muslim women and girls have been kidnapped by Islamic State thugs on the rampage in the country over the past two weeks.

They face the terrifying prospect of being forced into marriage, sold as sex slaves or shot if they do not convert to Islam.

Now hundreds of women from the Turkish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) have crossed into Iraq to help push the IS fighters out of the north of Iraq.

They are striking fear into the hearts of the Jihadist thugs who believe if they are killed by a woman in battle they will not reach heaven.

Heavily-armed female fighters joined hundreds of men from the PKK and fought against the insurgents under U.S. air cover.

They are working with the Iraqi Kurdish region Peshmerga forces around the regional capital of Erbil and the Sinjar mountains, where thousands from the Yazidi religious minority have been trapped by the rapid advance of Islamic State fighters.

Peshmerga means ‘those who face death’. Once mountain guerrillas fighting for Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, these forces are now working for the Kurdistan regional Government against the Islamic extremists.

“Our support is just as important for the peshmerga as these US strikes - bombings alone cannot get rid of guerrilla groups,” said Sedar Botan, a female PKK veteran commander. We will keep fighting until all of Kurdistan is safe.”

The Kurds are one of the world’s largest stateless groups and their population spans parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The PKK’s decades-long war for autonomy from Turkey has gained it international notoriety.

Loathed by millions of Turks for its campaign against the country’s police and conscript army, it has executed unarmed recruits and placed roadside bombs that have killed women and children.

But PKK guerrillas are assisting in the Kurdish ground offensive in conjunction with U.S. air attacks to retake the Mosul Dam from IS units.

The US and UK governments have long regarded the PKK as a terrorist organization in its fight against Turkish authorities for Kurdish rights.

But Iraqi terror expert Nasser Kataw said: “There has been a re-drawing of battlefield alliances as people who were once enemies have joined together to try and defeat the scourge that is the Islamic State.”