British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond said Monday his country had sent large shipments of weapons to Kurdish Peshmerga forces and would continue to do so in the future. Hammond told a Rudaw reporter following a UN Security Council meeting in New York that the UK would extend its airstrikes against ISIS into both Syria and Iraq and continue to arm Kurdish forces fighting ISIS on the ground. In July 2015, several MPs in the British House of Commons joined forces to back a formal Commons motion calling on the British government to support direct supplies of heavy weapons to the Kurdistan Regional Government and slammed Baghdad's effective blockade of such supplies. Britain was ready to deliver its first batch of weapons, including heavy machine guns and ammunition, to Kurdish forces fighting ISIS, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said in a September 2014 statement. "This will give the Kurdish Peshmerga forces additional firepower in order to help them defend the front line, protect civilians and push back ISIS advances," Fallon said in a statement using ISIS, an alternate acronym for ISIS. Britain is among a 60-nation, US-led coalition that has pledged to help defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
