Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi appeared to extend an olive branch to the breakaway Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in remarks in Paris on Thursday, urging Kurdish Peshmerga military forces to “work together” with Baghdad’s army.
Contents: Kirkuk becomes the flash point after the Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum; Significant differences in the three recent independence movements
Following Kurdistan’s overwhelming vote in favor of seceding from Iraq on Monday, Baghdad’s parliament announced a series of measures intended to prevent their independence, including deploying Iraqi troops to Kurdish Peshmerga held areas.
Over 90 percent of the three million voters in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq voted to secede from Iraq and establish an independent Kurdistan Monday, in an election widely heralded as free and fair.
Representatives of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq (KRG), including a spokesman for the Peshmerga, has requested the United States increase its aid to the group as the Peshmerga undergo a major restructuring intended to evolve them from one of the most effective militias in Iraq into the military of an independent Kurdistan.
Iraqi officials are preparing for the arrival of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to the nation’s largest city, Mosul, to declare victory after three years of Islamic State (ISIS) control.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a statement Friday rejecting the call by Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Masoud Barzani for a national independence referendum, declaring that the Kurdish people cannot “decide its fate unilaterally.”
Multiple Turkish media outlets are reporting that the United States deployed a new convoy of about 100 trucks to Syrian Kurds fighting the Islamic State in Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan, this week.
This story originally appeared at the Clarion Project: By Ryan Mauro The Syriac Military Council, a Christian militia in Syria opposed to the Assad regime, condemned Turkey for bombing its U.S.-backed Kurdish allies who are fighting ISIS. The Christians accused
Early Tuesday morning, a wave of Turkish airstrikes reportedly struck a headquarters building used by the Kurdish YPG militia in northeastern Syria. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 18 YPG fighters and media officials were killed in the attack.
A report in Kurdish Iraqi media cites Canada’s Defense Ministry as confirming that Ottawa will be shipping new weapons to the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force fighting the Islamic State in northern Iraq.
The month-old operation to rid the Iraqi city of Mosul of the Islamic State terrorist group continues, with Iraqi officers confirming nearly 1,000 jihadi deaths since it began. The tedious street-by-street assault has left a sea of bodies in its wake, however, and civilians demanding the government do something to clear the streets of blood.
The Turkish government has issued a warrant for the arrest of Salih Muslim, one of the leaders of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). The PYD’s military wings, the YPG and YPJ, are longtime American allies on the ground against the Islamic State in Syria.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told reporters on Thursday that Islamic State “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had fled Mosul shortly following the release of an audio message in which al-Baghdadi demanded his jihadi fighters not flee their largest stronghold in Iraq.
As the operation to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul of Islamic State terrorists continues, the civilians freed through the work of the Kurdish Peshmerga and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) did little to hide their joy at being rid of their oppressive regime.
Two weeks since announcing the start of the operation to liberate the city of Mosul from the Islamic State, the Iraqi army has crossed the city limits, and authorities claim troops are progressing steadily in capturing the city’s dense urban neighborhoods.
Elite Iraqi forces were poised Tuesday for a first push into Mosul, after the prime minister warned jihadists who hold the city they have no choice but to surrender or die.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has announced that the battle to retake Mosul, the nation’s second-largest city, from the Islamic State has reached “an advanced stage.” Following the Kurdish Peshmerga announcement Tuesday that they had completed the mission Baghdad approved for them, however, the Iraqi army has stumbled on its way to the urban center.
The line of cars flying white flags kept on coming Tuesday as Iraqi forces began to evacuate residents of the last villages near the Islamic State group bastion of Mosul.
The government of Turkey has warned that it is prepared for a ground invasion of northern Iraq if the Marxist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) does not vacate its camps in Sinjar. Turkey, present in Iraq against the wishes of Baghdad, has been training Kurdish Peshmerga militia units near Erbil, south of Sinjar.
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have closed in to within five miles of Mosul, the Islamic State’s capital in Iraq, despite fierce ISIS counterattacks.
Both the Turkish government and Kurdish Peshmerga forces say the Turks participated in the liberation of Bashiqa, a town eight miles from the regional Islamic State (ISIS) capital of Mosul. The Iraqi government has vehemently denied a Turkish role in the Mosul operation.
In a significant escalation of the battle for Mosul, elite Iraqi special forces joined the fight Thursday, unleashing a pre-dawn assault on an Islamic State-held town east of the besieged city, and the US military announced the first American combat death since the operation began.
Iraqi security forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and in collaboration with Kurdish Peshmerga troops and a Christian militia have besieged the Iraqi Christian town of Qaraqosh as part of the offensive to liberate the nearby city of Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), reports CNN.
Contents: Unrealistic expectations surround the battle to recapture Mosul from ISIS; Turkey views Iraq and Syria through the lens of World War I and the Ottoman Empire
The Islamic State’s news agency, Amaq, has produced an online video of “interviews with civilians,” one of which declares, “It is safe and life is normal. Satellite channels are lying. All their reports are lies.”
The battle to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State has entered its second day, with the Iraqi government reporting that 20 villages surrounding the regional capital have been liberated, but the gates of the metropolis itself remain far from participating militias.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — American troops, including some who are embedded with advancing forces, are “in harm’s way” as they collaborate with troops from Iraq, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and Iran-linked Shiite militias in the fight to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), according to the Pentagon.
Contents: Turkey and Iraq in dispute over Turkish participation in Mosul operation; Turkey views the Mosul operation as a security threat to Turkey; ISIS may be given a chance to escape to Syria
The United Nations says it bracing for the world’s biggest and most complex humanitarian effort in the upcoming battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul, which could make up to 1 million people homeless and see civilians used as human shields or even gassed.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserted on Tuesday that Turkey’s infantry will participate in the liberation of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from the Islamic State, despite repeated demands by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that Turkey stay out of his country.
The latest WikiLeaks document dump on Hillary Clinton includes an August 18, 2014 email she sent to John Podesta, who is currently her campaign chairman, but was a counselor to the Obama White House at the time.
The co-leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which controls large swathes of northern Syria, has solicited help from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London has published a report asserting that over 100 Americans are fighting alongside anti-ISIS militias in Iraq and Syria, making up over a third of the foreign recruits for those militia groups.
The first rule to building a wartime alliance is not to lose the allies you already have. Sadly, that rule seems unknown or is being willfully ignored by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.
Fighting between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and rebels affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) has reportedly erupted near the border with Iraq.
A group of 137 women, part of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority, graduated from military training under the Kurdish Peshmerga militia. The women are expected to join the front lines in the war against the Islamic State.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has stepped up its chemical attacks against Peshmerga fighters of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, a top commander of the Kurdish force told Breitbart News.
More horror stories have emerged from the Islamic State, including reports of commanders who fail to carry out their duties being fed to hungry dogs and chemical weapons being tested on the “caliphate’s” prisoners.
The ongoing fight to retake Mosul from the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is taking place in a political arena, rather than a battlefield, where Iraq’s rival ethnic and religious groups are duking it out over how to go about liberating the strategically important city, reports Foreign Policy (FP).
