Jalal Talabani

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has started to use the Turkish Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as their headquarters,  Al-Monitor reported, quoting an Iraqi official.

ISIL had recently renamed itself simply as the Islamic State (IS).

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was to return from months of treatment abroad, with his crisis-hit country on the brink of breakup but his native Kurdistan buoyant with statehood hopes.        

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.