Kurdish pesh merga troops fire at Islamic State positions as they move toward the Iraqi town of Badana Pichwk on Monday morning, October 17, 2016. Kurdish forces began Monday advancing on a string of villages east of Mosul, the start of a long-awaited campaign to reclaim Iraq's second-largest city from the Islamic State, which seized it more than two years ago, officials said. (Photo by Bryan Denton/The New York Times)

Kurdish gunmen hold their rifles in front of the burning house of a Shi'ite militiaman during clashes in Tuz Khurmato, Iraq, April 24, 2016. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

Female Kurdish Peshmerga take part their graduation ceremony at a police academy in Zakho district of the Dohuk Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan province, Iraq March 30, 2016. (Photo by Ari Jalal/Reuters)

A Kurdish fighter from the People's Protection Units (YPG) fires his rifle at Islamic State militants as he runs across a street in Raqqa, Syria, July 2017. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

People and security members run away as Kurdish animal rights activists release a bear into the wild after rescuing bears from captivity in people homes, in Dohuk, Iraq on February 11, 2021. (Photo by Ari Jalal/Reuters)

Iranian Kurdish female members of the Freedom Party of Kurdistan (PAK) hold a position on November 6, 2016 in an area near the town of Bashiqa, some 25 kilometres north east of Mosul, during an operation against Islamic State (IS) group jihadists to retake the main hub city. (Photo by Safin Hamed/AFP Photo)

A volunteer in the Kurdish Community Protection Forces guards wheat fields from fire or looting around the town of Tarbesbeyeh, also known as al-Qahtaniyah in Arabic, in northeastern Syria's Hasakeh Governorate near the Turkish border on May 30, 2024. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo)

Iraqis who have fled fighting between security forces and al-Qaida inspired militants in their hometown of Tal Afar arrive in a car at Germawa camp for displaced Iraqis, in a hot dusty plain in the largely-autonomous Kurdish area of Dahuk, 260 miles (430 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad Tuesday, June 17, 2014. (Photo by AP Photo)