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Iraq paramilitaries battle Kurds in push towards Turkish border

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BAGHDAD: Iraqi pro-government paramilitaries launched an offensive against Kurdish troops on Tuesday near the Turkish frontier, pushing towards a strategic border crossing and oil export pipeline hub that Baghdad says must come under its control. The Iraqi government has transformed the balance of power in the north of the country since launching a campaign last week to seize back territory from the Kurds, who govern an autonomous region of three northern provinces and had also seized a swathe of other territory in northern Iraq.


The Kurds held a referendum on independence last month that Baghdad called illegal.


Baghdad responded by seizing back the city of Kirkuk, the oil-producing areas around it, and other territory that the Kurds had captured from IS.


Prime Minister Haidar Abadi has ordered his army to recapture all disputed territory, and has also demanded central control of Iraq’s border crossings with Turkey, all of which are inside the Kurdish autonomous region itself.


A Kurdish official said Kurdish security forces known as Peshmerga had successfully beaten back an advance by pro-government paramilitaries in the region of Rabi’a, 40 km south of the Fish-Khabur border area. Fish-Khabur is strategically vital because oil from both Kurdish and government-held parts of northern Iraq cross at a pipeline there into Turkey, the main route out of the area for international export, crucial for any Kurdish independence bid.


The fighting so far has taken place outside the Kurdish autonomous region, but Fish-Khabur is located within it, so any assault on the border crossing would mark a major escalation, bringing government troops into undisputed Kurdish territory. An Iraqi military spokesman denied there had been any clashes in the area. But an Iraqi security source in Baghdad and a rights activist in northwest Iraq said the confrontation had started at dawn and was still going on by midday.


“Peshmerga repelled the attack and pushed Popular Mobilisation back in to Rabi’a,” tweeted KRG President Masoud Barzani’s media adviser, Hemin Hawrami. A military spokesman in Baghdad said in response: “There are no clashes.”


The fighting between the central government and the Kurds is particularly tricky for the United States which is close allies of both sides. — Agencies


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