{"id":1073,"date":"2017-10-20T16:17:38","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T16:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madaresharghi.com\/iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover\/"},"modified":"2017-10-20T16:17:38","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T16:17:38","slug":"iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi forces complete Kirkuk province takeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

madaresharghi<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

Iraqi forces took control on Friday of the last district in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk following a three-hour battle with Kurdish Peshmerga forces, security sources said.<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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\n\tThe district of Altun Kupri, or Perde in Kurdish, lies on the road between the city of Kirkuk \u2013 which was recaptured by Iraqi forces on Monday \u2013 and Erbil, capital of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq that voted in a referendum last month to secede from Iraq against Baghdad’s wishes, Reuters wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tA force made up of Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service units, Federal Police and Popular Mobilization began their advance on Altun Kupri on Friday, said an Iraqi military spokesman.<\/p>\n

\n\tKurdish Peshmerga forces withdrew from the town, located on the Zab river, after battling the advancing Iraqi troops with machineguns, mortars and rocket propelled grenades, Iraqi security sources said. Neither side gave immediate information about casualties in the fighting.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Iraqi central government forces have advanced into Kirkuk Province largely unopposed as most Peshmerga forces withdrew without a fight.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe government advance has transformed the balance of power in northern Iraq and is likely to scuttle the secession aspirations of the Kurds, who voted overwhelmingly on Sept. 25 to break away from Iraq and take the oilfields of Kirkuk with them.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fighting at Altun Kupri marked only the second instance of significant violent resistance by the Kurds in Kirkuk Province. Dozens were killed or wounded in the previous clash on Monday, the first night of the government advance.<\/p>\n

\n\tAltun Kupri is the last town in Kirkuk Province on the road to Erbil, lying just outside the border of the semiautonomous region established after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.<\/p>\n

\n\tIraqi forces are seeking to reestablish Baghdad’s authority over territory which the Kurdish forces occupied outside the official boundaries of their region, mostly seized since 2014 in the course of the war on Daesh terrorists.<\/p>\n

\n\tIraq’s top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on Friday for the state to protect Kurds in northern Iraq, a rare political intervention by a figure whose words have the force of law for most of Iraq’s Shia majority.<\/p>\n

\n\tSistani’s call, issued at the Friday prayers in the holy Shia city of Karbala by one of his representatives, came as tens of thousands of Kurds fled Kirkuk and Tuz to the two main cities of the Kurdish region, Erbil and Sulaimaniya, according to Kurdish officials.<\/p>\n

\n\tIraq’s post-Saddam Constitution allows the Kurds self-rule in three mountainous northern provinces and guarantees them a fixed percentage of Iraq’s total oil income, an arrangement that saw them prosper while the rest of the country was at war.<\/p>\n

\n\tKurdish Peshmerga moved into Kirkuk without a fight in 2014, taking over positions left by the Iraqi Army as it fled in the face of Daesh terrorists.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

madaresharghi Iraqi forces took control on Friday of the last district in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk following a three-hour battle with Kurdish Peshmerga forces, security sources said. The district of Altun Kupri, or Perde in Kurdish, lies on the road between the city of Kirkuk \u2013 which was recaptured by Iraqi forces on Monday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[639],"yoast_head":"\nIraqi forces complete Kirkuk province takeover - madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Iraqi forces complete Kirkuk province takeover - madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"madaresharghi Iraqi forces took control on Friday of the last district in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk following a three-hour battle with Kurdish Peshmerga forces, security sources said. The district of Altun Kupri, or Perde in Kurdish, lies on the road between the city of Kirkuk \u2013 which was recaptured by Iraqi forces on Monday […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-10-20T16:17:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/\",\"name\":\"madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\",\"description\":\"madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover\/\",\"name\":\"Iraqi forces complete Kirkuk province takeover - madaresharghi | An Analytical Look at Middle Eastern Developments\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-10-20T16:17:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-10-20T16:17:38+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/c52e345120843d5f259215c4e809cdd2\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/iraqi-forces-complete-kirkuk-province-takeover\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/c52e345120843d5f259215c4e809cdd2\",\"name\":\"administrator\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/901309319175b0d219e688b01909d220?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"administrator\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madaresharghi.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}