Mother of killed daughter is now back on the frontline - PHOTO

Now Ms Hamalaw, 55, a veteran of battles against a vengeful Saddam Hussein during the 1970s, plans to take revenge - by returning to the front line to massacre the terrorists herself.'They are dirt,' she spits furiously. 'They are the dirtiest people in the world, especially for those of us who are women.Like her husband Yousuf Majid, also 55, Ms Hamalaw is a colonel in the Kurdish armed forces or peshmerga as they are more commonly known.Based close to the town of Khurmatu in northern Iraq's Salahaddin Province, both are part of the battle against IS jihadis, although in different battalions and on different parts of the front line.Their daughter Rangin, a captain in the 2nd Battalion Peshmerga Female and the mother of a seven-year-old son, was, they say, was an accomplished fighter.'I'm proud of every single thing she ever did and I have so many good memories of her,' adds her sobbing mother. 'She never did anything that I couldn't be proud of. To me, she's not a martyr. She's alive and she's going to stay with me for ever.'Rangin, the first woman from the Iraqi-Kurdish peshmerga to be killed, died after a mortar exploded near her position during heavy fighting, leaving her body riddled with shrapnel.Her mother was fighting alongside her at the time. 'I started teaching her to shoot when she was 11,' she smiles through her tears.'She learned with me, her mother. And when she was killed, she was with me, her mother, as well. We were on the front line and they were shooting at us.'Mr Majid, also a veteran fighter, was with his battalion further down the front line when news of his daughter's death arrived.'The day my daughter was injured, my wife was there with her on the front line,' he remembers. 'I was further down in a place called Zirka, which is also on the front line. I got a message to say that my daughter had been injured.'Critically wounded, Rangin died 10 days later in hospital. Now her parents are returning to the front line - and have vowed to kill as many IS jihadis as they can before they are killed themselves.'From the day of the first IS attack, we knew about the possibility that we might have to die for our country,' explains Mr Majid.'That is why we chose to be peshmerga. The word peshmerga means "face of death". Being a peshmerga means you have to face up to death. That is why we chose to be peshmerga. 'We want to get freedom for our own country. If we hadn't chosen that, my daughter wouldn't have been killed. But it is what is right.'Women have long fought as frontline troops with the peshmerga which was, until recently, one of the few military organisations to allow it.In Britain, men were, until earlier this year, the only ones allowed frontline combat roles although women can and do play an important part in all three services.Despite the loss of his daughter, Mr Majid says the peshmerga's stance on female fighters is the correct one.'I believe in equality from day one,' he explains. 'I don't see any difference between men and women on the frontline. I respected my daughter's ability. 'When we trained together, they asked us to hit targets [in a firing range]. I couldn't do it but my daughter hit it every time. 'Always, there has been equality between us. Any woman can be as good with weapons as a man. My daughter could have been any Kurdish person's daughter.'The peshmerga, who are being supported from the air by British planes, have enjoyed some success in recent weeks and are pushing the jihadists back towards Mosul.A small, all-male, detachment have also travelled to Turkey to join the fight against IS in Kobani, the Syrian border town that has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent days.Nevertheless, the fighting in northern Iraq remains intense, with Ms Hamalaw saying that the former Ba'ath party men who have flocked to join IS in the north are making the situation ever more dangerous.'The IS people are all ex Ba'thist guys,' she sniffs scornfully. 'The governor of Mosul is Saddam Hussein's nephew. Most of them are Ba'athists.'(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.Az