{PM confirms Turkish military involvement after Peshmerga requests help in battle for Iraq’s second largest city.}<\/p>\n
Turkey has confirmed its troops have fired at positions held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in a town near Mosul after receiving a request by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters for assistance.<\/p>\n
Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced on Sunday Turkey’s involvement in the military offensive near Bashiqa, a town east of Mosul. He said that the Kurdish Peshmerga requested Turkey’s assistance.<\/p>\n
ISIL, also known as ISIS, took control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2014. A major drive to remove the hardline group from Mosul began last Monday.<\/p>\n
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are advancing on Bashiqa having launched a new operation on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“The Peshmerga have mobilised to cleanse the Bashiqa region from Daesh [ISIL]. They asked for help from our soldiers at the Bashiqa base. So we are helping the tanks with our artillery there,” Yildirim said.<\/p>\n
Turkey has troops at the base in Bashiqa, north of Mosul, where they have been helping to train Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni fighters.<\/p>\n
Relations between Ankara and Baghdad have been strained after Turkey sent hundreds of troops to the Bashiqa region to train anti-ISIL fighters. Baghdad labels the move a violation of its sovereignty and demands Turkish withdrawal, a call which Ankara ignores.<\/p>\n
Turkey claims the use of Shia militias to liberate Mosul will displace its largely Sunni population, and has demanded the Sunni fighters it has trained also play a role in the Mosul campaign.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Erbil, said Turkey’s latest moves were “hugely controversial”. <\/p>\n
“This is something that the federal government in Baghdad does not want – they have made this very clear,” Dekker said.<\/p>\n
“In fact, the US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter was in Baghdad yesterday. He put it to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi whether the Turks should have some involvement, and Abadi said ‘No thank you, we will leave this up to the Iraqis’.”<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of fighters, including Iraqi federal troops and Kurdish Peshmerga, are taking part in the assault. <\/p>\n
“Ankara wants to get involved. Turkey says it is their responsibility to ensure that Mosul doesn’t fall in the hands of any Shia or Kurdish militia,” said our correspondent.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Iraqi special forces are pushing into the district of Hamdaniya, from the south.<\/p>\n
Hamdaniya, considered to be the gateway to Mosul, was a densely populated area housing more than 60,000 people before the ISIL takeover.<\/p>\n
“The Iraqi troops are now in Hamdaniya, fighting their way towards the city centre,” said Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from the outskirts of Hamdiniya.<\/p>\n
“But it is proving to be a very difficult fight because ISIL still have snipers in the area. And they are still using suicide car bombs.”<\/p>\n
Some 1.5 million residents remain trapped in Mosul and worst-case scenario forecasts see up to a million being uprooted, according to the United Nations. UN aid agencies said the fighting has so far forced about 6,000 to flee their homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{PM confirms Turkish military involvement after Peshmerga requests help in battle for Iraq’s second largest city.} Turkey has confirmed its troops have fired at positions held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in a town near Mosul after receiving a request by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters for assistance. Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29675"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29675"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}