As Islamic State group fighters pillage their way across swaths of Syria and Iraq, they’ve managed to build up their military capability by commandeering U.S.-made Humvee armored vehicles, including one used Monday in a suicide bombing at an army base near Baghdad that killed at least 45 people. In an interview on Iraqiya TV, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said ISIS gained thousands of Humvees when it overran the northern city of Mosul on June 10 of last year.
“In the collapse of Mosul, we lost a lot of weapons,” Abbadi said an interview Sunday, as translated by Al-Jazeera. “We lost 2,300 Humvees in Mosul alone.”
The theft of a fleet of American-made military vehicles underscores the difficulty of ensuring that U.S. military aid doesn’t wind up in the hands of the enemy it’s aimed at defeating.
