Mosul

The next stages of the recently concluded Euphrates Shield Operation will be broader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said April 5, suggesting that Turkey would move on areas in Iraq.

Speaking in a joint interview with NTV and Star, Erdoğan described the Euphrates Shield Operation as the first stage of Turkey's counter-terrorism road map, saying expanded stages would follow.        

Members of the Kirkuk Provincial Council voted on March 28 in favor of raising the KRG flag over official buildings during a meeting that was boycotted by Turkmen and Arabs.

On April 1, the Iraqi parliament in a session voted against the decision of the Kirkuk Provincial Council.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has changed strategy and its militants have begun to relocate to countries such as Libya and engage in cybercrime as the group has lost land and revenue streams in Syria and Iraq, according to a NATO official.

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called on March 30 for protection of civilians to be the "absolute priority" as he visited Iraq, where hundreds of thousands are caught up in the battle for Mosul.

The time has come for the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad to start discussing an "amicable divorce," according to a spokesperson for the Kurdish autonomous region.

"We should enter a serious dialogue with Baghdad to reach an amicable solution - an amicable solution for divorce," KRG spokesperson Safeen Dizayee recently told daily Hürriyet.

The US military said on Wednesday that 284 members of the Iraqi security forces had been killed since the battle to retake western Mosul began, with more than 1,600 wounded.

At least 43 civilians, including women and children, were killed on March 27 by airstrikes carried out by the U.S.-led coalition aircraft in western Mosul, according to a senior Iraqi military officer.        

Today's Iraq is one of the countries that have emerged at the end of the 400-year-old Ottoman Empire rule after the First World War. 

Iraq is investigating air strikes in west Mosul that reportedly killed large numbers of civilians in recent days, a military spokesman said on March 26.

The international coalition battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) will begin a final push on the jihadists' Syrian stronghold Raqqa in the coming days, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on March 24.