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| Iraq |
| Peshmerga forces announce capture of Iraq’s Bashiqa |
| 2016-11-09 |
| [AA.TR] Kurdish Peshmerga forces Tuesday "entirely liberated" Iraq’s town of Bashiqa northeast of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , a Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) official has said. Jabar Yawar, head of the KRG’s Peshmerga Ministry, said the district had been entirely purged of ISIS elements after Peshmerga forces captured the town center Monday. Peshmerga fighters, he said, were currently clearing the area of landmines and booby-traps planted by members of the terrorist group. According to Anadolu Agency correspondents in Bashiqa, festivities continue to break out sporadically between Peshmerga fighters and Lions of Islam holed up in homes and tunnels. The majority-Ezidi town of Bashiqa lies some 12 kilometers (roughly 8 miles) to the northeast of Mosul, ISIS’s last bastion in northern Iraq. ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... has a longstanding military training mission at the nearby Camp Bashiqa, where Turkish soldiers have trained both Peshmerga fighters and local tribal volunteers in combat techniques. In recent months, the mission’s presence in northern Iraq has led to a degree of tension between Baghdad and Ankara amid calls by some Iraqi politicians for Turkish troops to withdraw from the area. Last month, the Iraqi army -- backed by U.S.-led coalition In mid-2014, ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, before overrunning vast swathes of territory in the country’s north and west. Recent months have seen the Iraqi army, backed by local allies on the ground and the U.S.-led air coalition, retake much territory, especially on Mosul’s outskirts and in Iraq’s western Anbar province. |
| Posted by:Fred |