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Kurd troops prepare for offensive in Mosul
HASAKAH – Kurdish Peshmerga forces would participate in any offensive operation to recapture the city of Mosul in northern Iraq from the radical group of Islamic State (ISIS), Karim Sinjari, interior minister of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, said on Wednesday. The Kurdish minister told local reporters that the Peshmerga forces have no intensions to enter the city of Mosul while participating in the upcoming anti-ISIS operation. Speaking to ARA News, political activist Marwan Eidi said: “Certainly there is no intention by the Kurdistan leadership to annex the city of Mosul to the Kurdish autonomy, except for some areas in the Nineveh Plain, villages and towns that were formerly under the control of Iraqi central government.” “These areas in Nineveh province are mainly part of the Kurdistan homeland in northern Iraq; the liberation of this region from ISIS’s terrorists was delayed for several factors, including political and regional reasons,” Eidi argued. The Kurdish activist stressed that the participating of the Peshmerga in liberating the city of Mosul is necessary. “The Peshmerga will likely retake the disputed areas in accordance with Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution,” he reported. “The visit of the French Minister and before representatives of the Czech Republic and Germany came to agree on specific points regarding their strategy towards the battle for Mosul,” Eidi told ARA News. The powers which prepare for the anti-ISIS battle to liberate Mosul include the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the National Defense group, the Iraqi army in addition to the US-led coalition forces. The visits of Western leaders to the Kurdistan region of Iraq came within the framework of coordinating and supporting the Kurdish Peshmerga forcesــ which have been playing a remarkable role in pushing back the terror group away from the areas held by Kurds in northern Iraq, according to Kurdish monitoring groups. Noteworthy, Mosul was controlled by ISIS in June 2014. The presence of a social incubator of Sunni tribes – who had been strained by the former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s policy– has facilitated the radical group’s control over the city, according to military experts. Posted by: badanov 2016-04-14 |
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