Jun 8, 2018

Canadian special forces have ended their training support for Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters, the defense department confirmed on Friday, after Ottawa suspended the assistance in October.

Canada is part of the United States-led international coalition against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, which has trained and assisted local forces while conducting air strikes against the jihadists, whose self-proclaimed "caliphate" has collapsed.

"The Special Operations Task Force has partnered with Kurdish units of the Iraqi security forces in the past," the Department of National Defense said in a sta

tement.

This assistance contributed "to the greater Iraqi security forces successes" in recapturing Iraq's second city, Mosul, and then in October freeing Hawija, the IS's last urban stronghold in Iraq, it said.