Provincial councillors in disputed, oil-rich Kirkuk province voted Tuesday to fly the Kurdish regional flag over government buildings, a move likely to increase tensions with Baghdad. Kirkuk is at the centre of a long-running dispute over northern territory between Kurdish authorities, who want to incorporate the land into their autonomous region, and the federal government … Read more
Russia is setting up a military base in northwestern Syria in agreement with the Syrian-Kurdish YPG armed group that controls the area and will train fighters, a YPG spokesman said on Monday. The agreement with Russia was concluded on Sunday and Russian troops have already arrived at the village of Kafr Jina, in the northwestern … Read more
Iraqi Kurdish forces deployed at a state-run oil company Thursday, temporarily halting pumping through a pipeline that is one of the country’s two main avenues for crude exports, officials said. The move highlights two fault lines that may increasingly come to the fore as Iraq’s war against jihadists winds down: the dispute between Baghdad and … Read more
A female reporter working for an Iraqi Kurdish channel was killed in a roadside bomb attack while covering clashes between government forces and ISIL in Mosul, her channel said. Killed on Saturday, Shifa Gardi was a presenter and chief of output at Rudaw, a media group in Kurdistan funded by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). … Read more
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday’s bomb attack Seven people have been killed and 15 wounded in a bomb attack on the offices of an Iranian Kurdish opposition party in northern Iraq, security sources say. A parked motorcycle and an explosive device were detonated late on Tuesday next to the headquarters of … Read more
About a month ago, photographer Eugenio Grosso traveled a 70-mile stretch in northern Iraq, from the city of Kirkuk to Sulaymaniyah in the country’s Kurdish region. He had only one purpose: to photograph the gas stations he saw along the way. “When I first noticed that there were so many petrol stations concentrated in the … Read more
Footage captures explosions near the Iraqi town of Bashiqa, where Kurdish forces have launched fresh Kurdish forces have carried out new attacks on positions of so-called Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq to retake the town of Bashiqa, near Mosul. Kurdish Peshmerga commanders said they made large advances into IS territory and secured part of … Read more
the defense secretary has arrived in Iraq to retake the northern city of Mosul US Defense Secretary Ash Carter arrived in Iraq Sunday for an update on the battle to retake the northern city of Mosul from the Islamic State (IS) group and to discuss a possible role for Turkish troops with Iraqi and Kurdish … Read more