Iraq’s foreign minister has reiterated demands that Turkish troops pull out of northern Iraq, warning Ankara that Baghdad may otherwise have to consider military action.
A Turkey-Iraq spat flared up in early December after Turkey deployed reinforcements to a camp in northern Iraq’s Bashiqa region where Ankara is helping train Kurdish fighters to battle Daesh militants.
The deployment riled Baghdad, which considers the new troops an illegal incursion and which subsequently demanded their immediate and complete withdrawal.
After Iraq’s demands, Turkey began withdrawing the troops but not completely.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari said Wednesday that Baghdad will continue to pursue peaceful means, but that if there is no other solution and if “fighting is imposed on us, we will consider it to protect our sovereignty.”
Separately, the US-led coalition said on Wednesday about 700 Daesh fighters are suspected to be hiding in the center and eastern outskirts of Ramadi days after Iraqi forces claimed victory over the militants in the western city.
Much of the center of the Anbar provincial capital still needs to be cleared of explosives laid by the insurgents who seized the city in May, delaying the return of tens of thousands of civilians who fled to Baghdad and other parts of the country, the coalition said.
The Iraqi Army retook Ramadi on Sunday in its first big victory against the rebels who swept through a third of Iraq in 2014, after months of cautious advances backed by coalition air strikes.
“Within what we call central Ramadi they estimate still up to 400 Daesh members and then once you go east of that toward Falluja you’ve got about 300 out there in that direction,” US Army Captain Chance McCraw, a military intelligence officer with the US-led coalition, told reporters in Baghdad.
Source: Arab News