Politics of Iraq

"Al-Qaeda offshoot" takes control of Iraqi town

MOSUL -- According to some reports, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have fled the Iraqi town of Mosul after ISIS fighters took control of it.

The group is said to be made up of Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda.

A day after Iranian President Hasan Rouhani called on Turkey to jointly fight against regional extremist terrorism for the stability of both countries and of the Middle East region, jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh, including Mosul, and were heading toward the province of Salahaddin, on the road to Baghdad.   

A car bomb followed by a suicide bombing hit offices of a Kurdish political party and security forces in Iraq on June 8, killing 17 people, police and doctors said.

The blasts in the town of Jalawla, north of Baghdad, also wounded 50 people, the sources said.

Turkey’s main opposition party has submitted a motion to launch a parliamentary investigation over the government’s decision to commence the shipment of Kurdish oil to world markets.

KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani says Turkey and his administration have signed a 50-year deal to export Kurdish oil, but the accord does not mean the divison of the country

Turkey has insisted that the export of Kurdish Iraqi oil to the world is Iraq’s internal business, downplaying opposition from Baghdad, which has accused Turkey of worsening the row over who controls Iraq’s resources.

Baghdad vents its fury at Ankara for its role in exporting Kurdish oil to the world amid KRG threats to secede from the rest of Iraq Turkey has been “driven by greed” in an escalating row over oil pumped from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region and shipped overseas, Baghdad’s top energy official has said, after northern Iraqi leader Masoud Barzani reportedly threatened to consider s

Kurdish oil from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to the southern Turkish port of Ceyhan continues at 100,000 to 120,000 barrels, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has said.

A wave of attacks in Iraq, including a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killed 27 people Tuesday, the latest in a protracted surge in bloodshed.
      
In the deadliest attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a Shiite mosque in central Baghdad's Shorja neighbourhood as worshippers were performing ablutions ahead of mid-day prayers.