Northern Iraq offensive

Ankara's former consul general to Mosul, Öztürk Y?lmaz, has raised questions over what will happen next if Turkey helps to clear Mosul of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants by sending troops to Bashiqa.

About 40 tunnels were uncovered by Kurdish forces who liberated Sinjar, a town in north-west Iraq this month. The town was under Islamic State rule for over a year.

The tunnels found had sleeping quarters, electricity, sandbags, American-made bomb making tools, medicine and copies of the Koran, as Daily Mail reports.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused the United States of trying to divide Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines and urged Iraqis to withstand any such plans.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Oct. 14 Moscow was helping the fight against Islamist insurgents in Iraq with the consent of the Baghdad government. 

"It is necessary to support the cooperation between the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurdistan in the fight against terrorism, but we are doing it with the consent of the government," he said. 

Kurdish forces attacked the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in northern Iraq on Sept.30 in the latest of several offensives aimed at driving the militants away from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. 

The assault began in the early morning to capture the al-Gurra heights to the west of Kirkuk in the direction of the ISIL bastion of Hawijah, Kurdish military sources said. 

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu on Sept. 4 spoke on the phone with his Iraqi counterpart Haider al-Abadi over the abduction of 18 Turkish workers in Baghdad on Sept. 2, as Iraqi security forces raided the Baghdad headquarters of a powerful Iranian-backed Shiite militia.
      

The kidnapping of 18 Turkish workers in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad was not the work of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or the outlawed Kurdistan Workers? Party (PKK), Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlio?lu said on Sept. 3.      

Ambassador Öztürk Y?lmaz, Turkey?s former consul general to Mosul who was among 49 hostages held by extremist militants in Iraq for 101 days, has resigned from Foreign Ministry to run in the Nov. 1 snap parliamentary elections as a candidate lawmaker for the Republican People?s Party (CHP), Turkish media reports said.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group made $11 million per month from "organised crime" in Iraq's Nineveh province before seizing it and capital city Mosul, a parliamentary report obtained by AFP says.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s charges against Turkey for lending support to militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have found a bitter response from Ankara, who said al-Maliki was among the leading actors in the fall of Mosul to jihadists.