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Mortar fire in disputed Tuz Khurmatu wounds 2 amid ethnic tensions
“Earlier this morning, some mortar shells were fired at the Askari neighborhood from an unknown location,” Mala Karim Shkur, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) office in Tuz Khurmatu, told Rudaw. The mortars landed near a bazaar, he said. “According to our information, two persons were wounded,” he added. The PUK official accused the Turkmen Hashd in Tuz Khurmatu of firing the mortar rounds. The Shiite Turkmen group meanwhile blames the Kurdish parties, he said. The Turkmen group has not issued a statement on the incident. The Shiite-majority Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitias, also known as the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), have recently been ordered to withdraw from “liberated” Iraqi cities following demands from Sunni politicians. “Now that there is an attempt to repel the Turkmen Hashd from Tuz Khurmatu, they are carrying out such acts in order to legitimize that they still do exist,” the PUK official said. The town of Tuz Khurmatu is still reeling from the October 16 events of last year which saw almost a complete displacement of Kurdish residents of the town and the withdrawal of Peshmerga forces. The Shiite Turkmen are affiliated with Hashd al-Shaabi. Major Sunni politicians have demanded the Hashd’s eviction from their cities, saying stability cannot be established where its forces are present. Last week, reports indicated the Hashd was withdrawing from cities in Nineveh. However, head of force deployments Jawad Kadhim denied any such plan, claiming Hashd in these areas were merely restructuring. The Hashd was formed following a call by Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the summer of 2014 when ISIS captured several Iraqi provinces. The nation's most powerful Shiite cleric urged civilians to take up arms and fight the group's expansion. The Iraqi parliament voted in November 2016 to recognize the Hashd as an official part of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Sistani in December called on the Hashd to come under the full command of the Iraqi military, adding the state must have exclusive authority over all armed forces. Posted by: trailing wife 2018-08-24 |
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