Category: Iraq

Kurdish forces advance to fight jihadis at Mosul dam on Monday Kurdish forces wrested control of Iraq ’s Mosul dam from jihadis on Monday, after the US launched its most intensive day of air strikes since intervening in the conflict 10 days ago. Although Kurdish peshmerga forces, with the support of US air power and Iraqi military on the ground, were still clearing the last resistance by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant , local officials said they had retaken the dam in the most significant defeat for Isis so far. More On this story On this topic IN Iraq Iraqi and US officials feared that Isis could use the Mosul dam, three decades old and poorly maintained, as a weapon. Whoever controls the dam could cut off power or water to millions of Iraqis. If destroyed, the dam could cause devastation that would destroy […]

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WASHINGTON — Iraqi and Kurdish ground troops overran Sunni militants and reclaimed Iraq’s largest dam on Monday, President Obama said, as American warplanes unleashed a barrage of bombs in an expansion of the limited goals laid out by the president in authorizing the military campaign in Iraq. Mr. Obama, who interrupted a family vacation on Martha’s Vineyard to meet Monday with his national security team in Washington, maintained that the airstrikes around the Mosul Dam were within the constraints of what he initially characterized as a limited campaign meant to break the siege of stranded Yazidis on Mount Sinjar and protect American personnel, citizens and facilities in Iraq. Administration officials repeatedly painted that second directive — the protection of Americans in Baghdad, 290 miles away — as the justification for the intense air campaign over Mosul Dam, seized two weeks ago by militants with the Islamic State in Iraq […]

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DOHUK Iraq (Reuters) – Kurdish fighters pushed to retake Iraq’s largest dam on Sunday in an attempt to reverse gains by Islamic State insurgents who have overrun much of the country’s north, officials said. Islamic State militants have seized several towns and oilfields as well as Mosul Dam in recent weeks, possibly giving them the ability to flood cities or cut off water and electricity supplies. Asked about a Kurdish push to dislodge the militants on Sunday, a Kurdish official said they had not retaken the dam itself but had seized "most of the surrounding area". Islamic State militants have told residents in the area to leave, according to an engineer who works at the site. The engineer said the militants told him they were planting roadside bombs along roads leading in and out of the facility, possibly in fear of an attack by Kurdish fighters who have been […]

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Oil production at Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest-producing oilfield is set to rise to as much as 14,000 barrels per day by the end of the month. TAQ TAQ OILFIELD, Iraq, Aug 15 (Reuters) – Oil production at Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest-producing field is set to rise to as much as 140,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the month despite the advance of Islamist militants, the general manager of the operating company told Reuters. "We have a target to ramp up production towards 140,000 bpd and I believe we would achieve this by the end of the month," Onder Tekeli from Taq Taq Operating Co (TTOPCO), a joint venture of Anglo-Turkish Genel Energy and Sinopec’s Addax Petroleum said late on Thursday. Radical Sunni militants of the Islamic State last week advanced to within a half hour’s drive of Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region and a hub for […]

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Oil production at Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest-producing oilfield is set to rise to as much as 14,000 barrels per day by the end of the month. TAQ TAQ OILFIELD, Iraq, Aug 15 (Reuters) – Oil production at Iraqi Kurdistan’s largest-producing field is set to rise to as much as 140,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the month despite the advance of Islamist militants, the general manager of the operating company told Reuters. "We have a target to ramp up production towards 140,000 bpd and I believe we would achieve this by the end of the month," Onder Tekeli from Taq Taq Operating Co (TTOPCO), a joint venture of Anglo-Turkish Genel Energy and Sinopec’s Addax Petroleum said late on Thursday. Radical Sunni militants of the Islamic State last week advanced to within a half hour’s drive of Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region and a hub for […]

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, threw his weight on Friday behind the new prime minister, calling for national unity to contain sectarian bloodshed and an offensive by Islamic State militants that threatens Baghdad. Speaking after Nuri al-Maliki finally stepped down as prime minister under heavy pressure from allies at home and abroad, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority said the handover to Maliki’s party colleague Haider al-Abadi offered a rare opportunity to resolve political and security crises. Iraq has been plunged into its worst violence since the peak of a sectarian civil war in 2006-2007, with Sunni fighters led by the Islamic State overrunning large parts of the west and north, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee for their lives and threatening the ethnic Kurds in their autonomous province. Sistani told the country’s feuding politicians to live up to their "historic responsibility" […]

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State insurgents "massacred" some 80 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority in a village in the country’s north, a Yazidi lawmaker and two Kurdish officials said on Friday. "They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon," senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. "We believe it’s because of their creed: convert or be killed." A Yazidi lawmaker and another senior Kurdish official also said the killings had taken place and that the women of the village were kidnapped. A push by Islamic State militants through northern Iraq to the border with the Kurdish region has alarmed the Baghdad government, drawn the first U.S. air strikes since the end of American occupation in 2001 and sent tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians fleeing for their lives. Yazidi parliamentarian Mahama Khalil said he had spoken to villagers who had survived the attack. They said […]

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State insurgents "massacred" some 80 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority in a village in the country’s north, a Yazidi lawmaker and two Kurdish officials said on Friday. "They arrived in vehicles and they started their killing this afternoon," senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters. "We believe it’s because of their creed: convert or be killed." A Yazidi lawmaker and another senior Kurdish official also said the killings had taken place and that the women of the village were kidnapped. A push by Islamic State militants through northern Iraq to the border with the Kurdish region has alarmed the Baghdad government, drawn the first U.S. air strikes since the end of American occupation in 2001 and sent tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians fleeing for their lives. Yazidi parliamentarian Mahama Khalil said he had spoken to villagers who had survived the attack. They said […]

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The success of stated limited U.S. humanitarian goals for the latest intervention in Iraq could hinge on more than the fate of minorities trapped on top of the Mount Sinjar. That is because the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has taken control of critical water and oil infrastructure including the Mosul Dam .  Flooding from improper management of the Mosul Dam or a purposeful use of the Dam as a weapon, either by releasing a torrent of flood water or cutting off access to water, would cause an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe. Water is also a vital component for oil production in southern Iraq, where the fields require water injection to maintain field pressure. A sudden shortage of water for oil production in southern Iraq could both disrupt production and possibly cause permanent damage to reservoirs. Iraq would have difficulty coping with either contingency given violence-related recent evacuation […]

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Kurdish peshmerga fighters To the west, they are terrorists, yet they are now fighting on the same side as their interests converge with the US in the fight to help Iraq’s Kurdish forces stave off a jihadi offensive. Battle-hardened Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) militants have come to the aid of peshmerga fighters in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as Isis , augmenting US air strikes to halt the jihadi group’s advance into the autonomous region of northern Iraq. More On this story On this topic IN Iraq Sun-baked men and women from the outlawed Kurdish group, in baggy sirwal pants and dusty sneakers, stand guard at their base in the recently recaptured town of Makhmour. They greet visitors cheerfully, but keep their grenades in hand. “Our support is just as important for the peshmerga as these US strikes – bombings alone can’t […]

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