Muslim, Assyrian Christian, Yezidi, Shabaki, and Armenian Christian forces faced the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Although some 35,000 Kurdish Peshmerga were incorporated into the Iraqi Armed Forces, most Peshmerga forces operated under the command of the President of Iraqi Kurdistan in the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. Assyrian forces included: Nineveh Plain Protection Units, Nineveh Plain Forces, Babylon Brigades, Kataib Rouh Allah Issa Ibn Miriam, Qaraqosh Protection Committee and Dwekh Nawsha. Timeline 2014 In the course of their Anbar campaign, ISIL militants and their baathist allies seized at least 70% of Al Anbar Governorate by June 2014, including the cities of Fallujah, Al Qaim, and half of the provincial capital of Ramadi. ISIL forces also infiltrated Abu Ghraib in Baghdad Governorate. In early June 2014, following further large-scale offensives in Iraq, ISIL and their allies seized control of Mosul, the second most populous city in Iraq, the nearby town of Tal Afar and most of the surrounding Nineveh Governorate. ISIL also captured parts of Kirkuk and Diyala Governorates and Tikrit, the administrative center of the Salahuddin Governorate, with the ultimate goal of capturing Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. ISIL was believed to have only 2,000–3,000 fighters up until the Mosul campaign, but during that campaign, it became evident that this number was a gross underestimate. There were also reports that the number of Sunni groups in Iraq that were opposed to the predominantly Shia government had joined ISIL, thus bolstering the group numbers. However, the Kurds—who are mostly Sunnis—in the northeast of Iraq, were unwilling to be drawn into the conflict, and there were clashes in the area between ISIL and the Kurdish Peshmerga. On 12 June 2014 ISIL killed 1,700 unarmed Iraqi Air Force cadets who were caught trying to flee to safety and released many images of mass executions via its Twitter feed and various websites. In late June, ISIL militants captured two key crossings in Anbar, a day after seizing the border crossing at Al-Qaim. According to analysts, capturing these crossings could aid ISIL in transporting weapons and equipment to different battlefields. Two days later, the Syrian Air Force bombed ISIL positions in Iraq near the Al-Qaim border post. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated: "There was no coordination involved, but we welcome this action. We welcome any Syrian strike against Isis because this group targets both Iraq and Syria." At this point, The Jerusalem