Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)

The president of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has said during a visit to Peshmerga forces operating in Arbil and Mosul that the autonomous region is insistent about its independence, while also calling for unity against a recent call for dual management in the Kurdish region. 

The two leading Iraqi Kurdish parties have been removed from the United States terrorist list, a senior U.S. official has announced.

The Kurdistan Democratic Union (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have been recognized as Tier III terrorist group under the Patriot Act of the U.S. since 2001, although both organizations are long-time U.S. allies.

A Yazidi lawmaker has pleaded in tears at the Iraqi Parliament for help, as reports of massacres spread after militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacked the district Sinjar near the Syrian border. Feyyan Dahil, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said at least 500 people had been killed and 500 women were abducted as concubines.

A car bomb followed by a suicide bombing hit offices of a Kurdish political party and security forces in Iraq on June 8, killing 17 people, police and doctors said.

The blasts in the town of Jalawla, north of Baghdad, also wounded 50 people, the sources said.