A military force belonging to the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) has approached a position of the Peshmerga Forces in northern Khanaqin District demanding the handover of the military position. But the Peshmerga Forces rejected the demand and proposed to discuss the issue instead.
The demand was made on 7 September, after a PMU intelligence officer was killed on 5 September between the position lines between PMU and Peshmerga Forces in Khanaqin.
a force consisting of 20 military vehicles belonging to Badr approached the Peshmerga position and demanded us to retreat from the position
A high-level commander within the Peshmerga Forces talked to KikukNow and stressed that “a force consisting of 20 military vehicles belonging to Badr approached the Peshmerga position and demanded us to retreat from the position. But we rejected the demand and asked them to visit the headquarters of Brigade 3 of Peshmerga Forces for talks on the issue, instead of bringing forces upon Peshmerga Forces positions.”
The source said that after two hours of communication and talks, the PMU force retreated.
There are several military positions of PMU and Peshmerga Forces in northern parts of Khanaqin District. At some points, only a road separates the two sides.
A new military operation by the Iraqi Army and PMI to sweep the area from “ISIS militants” has been launched today (8 September 2020). According to a statistic, in the past five weeks, eight people have been killed and seven were injured by armed attacks.
Murtaza Obeidi, PMU’s 1st Brigade PR person, told KirkukNow: “We conducted the operation on the banks of the Sirwan river, north and south of Khanaqin. We noticed that ISIS is active in the region.”
The PMU also searched a village in the Glay area in Khanaqin on Monday (7 September). They have confiscated a number of weapons belonging to the villagers.
