But annual event has taken on new poignancy following the rise of ISIS

Hundreds of Iraqi students have taken to the country's streets to celebrate National Peshmerga Day - paying tribute to the brave Kurdish fighters leading the country's anti-ISIS resistance.

Young men and women in the northern city of Kirkuk, which has come under relentless attack from jihadis over the past few months, wore the force's distinctive red berets and combat clothing as they took part in a parade near the local university.

The annual event has taken on new poignancy this year following the rise of ISIS, but it originally started as a way for Iraqi Kurds to mark the moment in December 1945 when peshmerga forces took control of the final remaining military barracks in the Kurd-dominated Iranian city of Mahabad.

Celebrate: Hundreds of Iraqi students - many of them women - took to the country's streets for National Peshmerga Day, paying tribute to the brave Kurdish fighters leading the country's anti-ISIS resistance

Parade: Students in Kirkuk, which has come under relentless attack from jihadis over the past few months, wore the force's distinctive uniforms as they took part in a parade near the local university (background)

The word peshmerga is a widely used term to refer to Kurdish armed forces, but it is also the formal name of the Kurdistan Regional Government's armed forces in semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.

The peshmerga have existed since the advent of the Kurdish independence movement in the early 1920s, following the collapse of the Ottoman and Qajar empires which had jointly ruled the area.

The armed milita has long acted as a security force in Iraq, cooperating with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that eventually led to the capture and execution of dictator Saddam Hussein.

They have also worked closely with the Americans to target Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq.

One of the toughest challenges in the peshmerga's 90-year existence has been the rise of the terrorist group now known as Islamic State, which has been operating in various guises in Iraq for close to 15 years.

Over the past year, however, the militants have stepped up their assault on Iraq, dramatically seizing vast areas of land in the west of the country in a lightning advance in early summer.

Since then the peshmerga have proved themselves one of the most effective groups battling ISIS, refusing to give in to their fellow Sunni Muslims and even sending a large fighting force over the border to Syria where they have helped fellow Kurds battle the terror group in the city of Kobane.

Destroyed: A car bomb blast targeted a Kurdish neighbourhood in Kirkuk left 16 people dead last Friday

Iraqis inspect the site of a suicide bomb attack that hit the Shorja district in Kirkuk last week, killing 16 people

Yesterday's defiant parade in Kirkuk comes just a week after ISIS militants killed 16 people in a car bomb attack outside a cafe in the oil rich city, which lies 180 miles north of the capital Baghdad.

The disputed oil hub of Kirkuk is an ethnically mixed city which lies outside the recognised autonomous Kurdish region but is currently under the full control of the peshmerga forces.

The last major bomb attack in Kirkuk was in August when triple blasts, including two targeting the Kurdish security forces, left 38 dead.