Wild boars reportedly attacked ISIS in Iraq, killing 3 fighters

On Sunday, a herd of wild boars overran an Islamic State position about 50 miles southwest of Kirkuk, killing three ISIS militants likely preparing to ambush local anti-ISIS tribes, according to tribal leaders and Kurdish military officials. Five other ISIS militants were injured, Sheikh Anwar al-Assi, a chief of the local Ubaid tribe, told The Times of London. "It is likely their movement disturbed a herd of wild pigs, which inhabit the area as well as the nearby cornfields."

Local tribes, Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Iraqi army troops, and some Shiite militias from Iran are fighting ISIS south of Kirkuk, as Iraqi and U.S. forces are focusing most of their energy on pushing ISIS out of Mosul. Three days before the boars attacked ISIS, al-Assi said, ISIS militants massacred 25 people fleeing to Kirkuk from ISIS-held Hawija, on the road from Mosul to Baghdad.

Brigadier Azad Jelal, deputy chief of Kurdish intelligence in Kirkuk, confirmed the boar attack, telling Britain's Telegraph, "three fighters from ISIL were near the peshmerga checkpoint in al-Rashad. They met some feral boars and the boars killed the three fighters. ... Some refugees saw the bodies on the edge of a farm when they were fleeing and they told us." Assuming you are rooting for the boars and not ISIS, this doesn't have a happy ending. "A few days later ISIL started to kill pigs around the area," Jelal said.

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Boars don't normally attack people, but they are ferocious when they do, Newsweek says, quoting a 2006 article on boar attacks in the Journal of Forensic Medicine: "The boar has a typical method of attack wherein it steadily rushes forward, pointing the tusks toward the animal to be attacked and inflicts the injuries. It goes back, takes position, and attacks the victim again. This repeated nature of attack continues till the victim is completely incapacitated due to multiple penetrating injuries, which can have a fatal consequence."