Iraqi Kurdistan

Turkey carried out airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Saturday after an attack on a Turkish military base in Iraq killed nine Turkish soldiers.

Iran-backed Shiite militia forces in Iraq on Tuesday claimed credit for launching explosive-laden drones at bases housing U.S. forces.

Turkish military bombardments targeting sites near Yazidi refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan have displaced the camps’ inhabitants in recent weeks, the Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported on Wednesday.

Members of the Kakai, a minority Kurdish group in Iraq’s northeastern town of Kirkuk, are fleeing their villages because they fear attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group, local officials told Voice of America (VOA) on Wednesday.

Iran-backed militias launched several rockets into northeastern Iraq’s Kurdish Region on Wednesday, Iraqi Kurdistan’s counterterrorism service said.

A major hospital in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, said it will only accept Chinese coronavirus patients amid a skyrocketing number of new cases in the region, Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported.

Eight villages near the border of Iraq’s Kurdistan region have been emptied as residents flee a Turkish military offensive called “Operation Claw-Tiger” directed at positions allegedly held by the PKK, the Kurdish separatist party that has long been engaged in hostilities with the Turkish government.

The abuse of illicit narcotics in Iraqi Kurdistan is “rising year by year,” an official from the region’s security apparatus reportedly declared this week after the local government published figures on substantial seizures of heroin and the arrest of hundreds of drug offenders in recent months.

Iraq’s foreign ministry (FM) on Sunday condemned Ankara’s forces for shooting at a crowd of demonstrators in Iraqi Kurdistan who attacked a Turkish military camp in protest of Turkey’s most recent airstrikes on members of a Kurdish terrorist group, a move that violated Iraq’s sovereignty. 

The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq rejected a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published Tuesday accusing Iraqi Kurds of using “electric shock” and other forms of torture to force child detainees into giving false confessions of involvement with the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday paid an unscheduled visit to Baghdad and the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region in northern Iraq as part of his Middle East tour of several nations that began in Jordan this week.

Iraqi model and Instagram starlet Tara Fares has been shot dead at the wheel of her Porsche convertible in central Baghdad, sending ripples through social media circles.

TEL AVIV – A baby from Iraqi Kurdistan who was born with a congenital heart defect is being flown to Israel for life-saving surgery.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, have agreed on the need for northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Shiite-led Baghdad to resolve their Kurdish independence efforts-linked differences through dialogue, according to the White House.

The Trump administration’s opposition to the independence referendum approved by northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has prompted the Kurds to consider “revising” its mutually beneficial relationship with the United States, according to the region’s former president.

The chief of staff to the Iranian regime’s “supreme leader” said on Tuesday that a US-Israeli “plot” to create a “second Israel” in Iraqi Kurdistan had been thwarted through the seizure of Kurdish territory by Iranian-backed forces over the last week.

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the Kurdistan regional government representative to the United States, spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Thursday regarding the thousands of Kurds fleeing Kirkuk following the Iraqi Army invasion of the city after an independence referendum.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the Syrian conflict in a phone call Wednesday afternoon, two days after Israeli jets bombed an anti-aircraft battery near Damascus which had fired on an Israeli plane, the Kremlin said.

Advancing Iraqi troops, backed by Iran-allied Shiite militias, are reportedly coercing “thousands” of residents to abandon the Kurdish-held multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a testament to the ongoing altercations triggered by Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence referendum last month.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton spoke to Breitbart News Daily Sirius XM host Alex Marlow Monday, coming out strongly in support of Iraqi Kurdistan in its bid for independence and criticizing American ties to the Iraqi national government, which he described as “dominated by Iran.”

The Shiite-led government in Baghdad has warned that Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war over its autonomous Kurdistan region’s refusal to cancel the outcome of its independence referendum.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to “soon” close its border crossings and airspace to the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq to retaliate against Kurds who overwhelmingly voted “yes” to independence last week.

The presidents of Turkey and Iran reportedly stressed their strong objections to Iraqi Kurdistan’s efforts to become an independent state during a recent meeting in Tehran.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Tuesday, former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a respected Kurdish statesman, passed away at a hospital in Berlin, Germany, after slipping into a coma.

Shiite-led Arab lawmakers in Baghdad, Iraq, are punishing their Kurdish counterparts for voting in the independence referendum held by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq last week, banning them from participating in parliament and urging the country’s judicial branch to take punitive measures against them.

Shiite-led Baghdad’s “oppression” prompted the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region to determine its fate in an independence referendum vote last week, argues the mufti of Iraq’s Sunni minority.

Tehran has reportedly deployed dozens of artillery-backed tanks and its powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to link up with Iran-allied Shiite militias at the Iraqi Kurdistan border in response to the Kurds overwhelmingly voting in favor of independence from Iraq last Monday.

A group of Sunni Arab tribal leaders has voiced support for the non-binding independence referendum passed by northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region this week, denouncing Shiite-led Baghdad’s opposition.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq has reportedly refused to hand over control of its international crossings to Shite-led Baghdad, which has vowed to seize authority over the borders of its autonomous region with the help of neighboring Iran and Turkey.

The State Department made clear Friday that the United States will not recognize Iraqi Kurdistan’s referendum on independence held Monday to separate from Iraq.

Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Ankara this week to discuss the ongoing war in Syria with his Turkish counterpart, marking the latest sign of an improving relationship between the two countries that is prompting concerns in the West.

Representatives from various ethnoreligious minority groups in Iraq – including Christians, Yazidis, and Turkmen – expressed distress towards Kurds voting “yes” to Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence this week, with some saying the referendum was “illegal” and “forced.”

Widely feared risks of “unrest” expressed by the United States and other countries opposed to the independence referendum held by northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) failed to materialize Monday, the day of the vote.

As voters at home wait for President Donald Trump to deliver on signature campaign promises, the Kurds – key allies hoping for change from Obama’s disastrous policies – now have a reason for disappointment.

Ambivalence swirls around Russia’s support for the September 25 independence referendum to be held by the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, argues an analysis published by the Kurdish news agency Rudaw.

The United Nations, echoing the United States and Iran, has come out against Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence referendum, scheduled to pass this month.