(AP-Washington Post) Philip Issa and Balint Szlanko - Kurdish forces on Tuesday pulled out of areas across northern and eastern Iraq they had seized from Islamic State in recent years, a day after giving up the city of Kirkuk, in a dramatic redeployment that opened the way for Iraqi government troops to move in. Kirkuk was a vital source of oil revenues for the Kurdish regional government. Peshmerga commander Wista Rasoul, who led a division in Kirkuk, said the pullout was a response to the central government's vastly superior firepower. Vahal Ali, a senior adviser to Kurdish President Masoud Barzani, said the peshmerga would withdraw to the areas it held in 2014.
2017-10-18 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive