German cabinet approves training mission to Iraq
The German cabinet on Wednesday agreed to send around 100 German troops to northern Iraq to train Kurdish peshmerga forces fighting Islamic State militants.
Islamic State has caused international alarm by capturing large expanses of Iraq and Syria and declaring an Islamic "caliphate". Western powers see the Kurds as a vital bulwark against further IS advances.
In the last few months France, Britain, Germany and others have begun arming the Kurds, whose Soviet-era weaponry has proved ineffective against insurgents flush with hardware plundered from the Iraqi army.
"With Islamic State, sheer barbarism has returned to the Middle East," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, adding they were a terrorist group who showed unimaginable violence to all who opposed them.
