French soldier fighting for life after IS drone attack in Iraq

A French soldier is fighting for his life after being wounded in an Islamic State armed group drone attack, which seriously wounded one of his colleagues and killed two Kurdish peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq, French media report. The deaths mark the first time that IS has killed anyone using a drone.

Iraqi peshmergas training near Erbil in September REUTERS/Azad Lashkari

French government government spokesperson Stéphane Le Foll confirmed on Wednesday that two French parachutists were seriously wounded when the booby-trapped drone exploded in the Iraqi city of Erbil on 2 October.

About a dozen French soldiers were injured and flown back for hospital treatment in France, according to blogs on the site of Ouest-France newspaper.

One is "between life and death", according to Le Monde newspaper.

Two Iraqi-Kurdish peshmerga fighters were killed after picking up a polystyrene model airplane and taking it to their camp where it exploded while they were photographing it, according to US officials.

The explosion was timed and not remote controlled, they say.

500 French forces in Iraq

IS quite often uses drones, according to US Colonel John Dorrian, but this is the first time anyone has died as a result.

France has about 500 soldiers in Iraq, roughly the same as the US, although President Barack Obama recently approved the dispatch of 600 more to help the effort to recapture the northern city of Mosul.

They provide artillery support to Iraqi forces fighting IS, advise the peshmerga in the north and train Iraqi troops in Baghdad.

French casualties in Guinea, Mali

French forces abroad have suffered another death and other injuries this month.

A French airforce officer was killed in Guinea's capital, Conakry, in a plane crash that also killed the Guinean copilot on 5 October.

Six soldiers were slightly wounded in northern Mali when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device on 9 October.