Italians train Kurdish battalion to fight ISIS

(ANSA) - Rome, September 18 - Italian military instructors belonging to the Erbil Task Force have concluded the first, six-week stage of training for a Kurdish Peshmerga battalion, the defence ministry said Friday.
    The idea is to increase the tactical combat skills of Peshmerga units in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) fundamentalist militia.
    The course was conducted by the Kurdish Training Coordination Center (KTCC) Multinational Command - currently under Italian lead - which also includes Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Hungarian and Norwegian trainers.
    The KTCC, currently made up of 530 men and women from seven different nations, has trained some 4,000 Kurdish troops since January this year, according to the ministry's website.