(Reuters) - The body of Kurdish leader and ex-Iraqi president Jalal Talabani arrived on Friday in Sulaimaniya, his home city in northern Iraq, from Germany where he died on Tuesday at age 83, live footage on Iraqi state TV showed. The Iraqi Airways plane transporting Talabani’s coffin...
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces have captured the town of Hawija and the surrounding area from Islamic State, though some fighting still raged in a pocket to the north and east of the town where the militants were surrounded, the military said on Thursday. With the capture of Hawija,...
Turkish jets destroyed weapon depots and hideouts used by PKK terrorists in the Gara region of northern Iraq, the military said on Wednesday. According to a statement issued by the Turkish General Staff, the warplanes carried out airstrikes targeting PKK camps in the Gara region on...
Turkey (Reuters) - A bomb detonated by Kurdish militants killed three soldiers and wounded five more in southeast Turkey near the border with Iran, the Hurriyet news website said on Wednesday. It said the blast occurred in the Yuksekova district of Hakkari province and that a large...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday the United States should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless it were proven Tehran that was not abiding by the agreement or that it was not in the U.S. national interest to do so. Though Mattis said he...
Iran deployed a dozen tanks supported by artillery at its border with Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Monday, a Kurdish official said, adding that the move was a dangerous escalation in the crisis triggered by Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence vote. “The tanks can be seen from the...
Iraqi forces and Shi‘ite paramilitaries captured an air base from Islamic State on Monday, the army said, gaining a strategic foothold in the north of the country as they push toward the town of Hawija. Iraq launched an offensive on September 21 to dislodge Islamic State from...
Germany welcomed U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s announcement that he was “probing” opportunities for dialogue with North Korea about its nuclear weapons program and called for Washington to take a similar step with Iran. German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel also warned in a...
(Reuters) - The powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Saturday that an Iraqi Kurdish independence vote marked a first step toward the partition of the Middle East, warning that this would lead to “internal wars” and must be opposed. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed...
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Iraqi Kurdish authorities would pay the price for an independence referendum which was widely opposed by foreign powers. Iraq’s Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in Monday’s referendum, defying neighboring...
CAIRO (Reuters) - Six Egyptian men arrested for “promoting sexual deviancy” and “debauchery” on social media will be subjected to anal examinations ahead of their Oct. 1 trial, Amnesty International said on Saturday. Their arrest is part of a wider crackdown against homosexuality that...
A decade on, Rawda al-Zaanoun is at last willing to forgive the gunmen who killed her son during the civil war that split Palestine. It has been painful, but she says it is time. ”He was hit with a bullet in the back. He was a martyr,“ the 54-year-old said at an event in Gaza city to...
(Reuters) - A ban on international flights into Iraq’s Kurdish region was being imposed on Friday after the Baghdad government retaliated against a vote for independence that has drawn opposition from foreign powers. Iraq’s Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in a referendum on...
Iraqi forces Friday launched an assault on the northern town of Hawijah, one of the last bastions still held by Daesh (ISIS) in the country, its commander said. "A huge military operation has begun to liberate Hawijah and its surrounding areas," Lt. Gen. Abdel Amir Yarallah said in a...
Turkey said on Thursday it had stopped training peshmerga forces in northern Iraq in response to a Kurdish independence vote there, whose backers had thrown themselves “into the fire”. The Kurdish peshmerga have been at the forefront of the campaign against Islamic State and been...
(Reuters) - Interpol voted on Wednesday to admit the State of Palestine as a member over Israeli objections at the international police organization’s general assembly in Beijing. The decision came despite Israeli efforts to delay a vote and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a...
Thousands of Turkish volunteers are ready to fight in Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities to defend the country’s Turkmen population, the head of Turkey’s nationalist opposition said on Wednesday. Devlet Bahceli said the minority Turkmen, who have close ethnic ties to Turkey, would not be...
A top ranking delegation from Iraq's armed forces headed to neighbouring Iran Wednesday "to coordinate military efforts," according to a statement from the Iraqi military. The statement did not give any details about the aim of the visit, believed to be part of retaliatory measures...
Islamic State militants holed up west of Baghdad launched their biggest attack on Iraqi troops in months on Wednesday, security sources said, killing at least seven soldiers before being forced to retreat. The fighting, near the city of Ramadi in Anbar province, continued for...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A vote by Iraq’s minority Kurds for independence is a blow to the United States, which has spent years, billions of dollars and the lives of thousands of troops trying to hold Iraq together, former U.S. officials and other policy experts said. A diplomatic drive...
