Iraq

Report: Turkish Troops Pull Back from Iraq’s Nineveh Province

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The Turkish forces withdrew to their country after entering Iraq’s Nineveh province, media reports said on Saturday.

Turkey had dispatched a battalion comprising 130 soldiers to an area near the city of Mosul on the pretext of providing military training to the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

Mosul is now under the control of the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group.

“The Turkish forces have left Nineveh province,” the Arabic-language al-Mayadeen TV quoted an unnamed high-ranking official as saying today.

The Turkish government claimed that it has sent troops to the Northern parts of Iraq in a bid to train the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

Turkey has close relations with Kurds in Northern Iraq, though Ankara views Syria’s Kurdish population across the border as hostile to its interests.

Baghdad condemned Ankara’s disrespect for the two countries’ border, and called on Turkey to immediately withdraw its troops to behind the borderline.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said the entry of “around one armed battalion” of Turkish soldiers to the Nineveh province area near Mosul was done without Iraq’s permission.

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