Geography of Iraq

German and Kurdish archaeologists have found a 3400-year-old palace in northern Iraq thanks to prolonged drought, DPA reported.

The building of a minimum of 2000 sq. M is made of brick walls up to 2 m high and is located in a reservoir in Iraqi Kurdistan. The palace was part of the ancient and mysterious Mittani Empire, experts from the University of Tübingen, Germany announced.

A 3,000-year-old carved stone tablet from Babylonia, which promises a curse on those who would destroy it, is to be flown home from Britain after being looted during the Iraq War.

On the opposite wall is a flickering video—a fire inside a cave where early man scribbled inscriptions on its walls in 50,000 BC. Iraq, formerly a part of Mesopotamia, was the birthplace of Babylon, an anicent kingdom and myth from our imaginations.

Gunmen entered the governorate building in Erbil, the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq on Monday and began firing from windows at Kurdish security forces, a deputy governor of the city and Kurdish security officials said.

One policeman was killed and 22 people were injured in a suicide bombing targeting ballot boxes in Iraq's northern Kirkuk province on July 1, according to a local police officer.

A Daesh (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a ballot box warehouse south of the Kirkuk province, police captain Hamed al-Obeidi told Anadolu Agency.

The semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, which voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence last year in a referendum rejected by Baghdad, will hold an election on Sept. 30.

Baghdad and Arbil have requested Turkey’s mediation after tensions between the central government and the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) soared over the latter’s September 2017 independence referendum, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said.

Iraqi forces on Dec. 16 uncovered two mass graves in northern Iraq, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, citing a local Iraqi official.

At least 20 people were killed and 40 wounded when a suicide bomber set off a truck bomb near a crowded marketplace in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu, south of oil city Kirkuk, police and medical sources told Reuters on Nov. 21.

The authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan have frozen the results of the referendum on independence and are negotiating with Baghdad.

In a statement, the regional government says it is taking peaceful steps to prevent collisions, sega said.