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Iraqi Kurdish army brigade 'Peshmarga'
Trains for Baghdad
13.1.2007 |
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Kurdish Brigade Trains for Baghdad
January 13, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan Region (Iraq), -- An
Iraqi Kurdish army brigade 'Peshmarga' based in the
northern Kurdistan autonomous region is undergoing
intensive training in urban combat and will be
dispatched to Baghdad city in Iraq as part of a new
joint U.S.-Iraqi security drive in the sprawling and
violence-ridden city, the commander said Saturday.
The brigade is one of two coming from the Kurdish
region and a third brigade will come from southern
Iraq. The second Kurdish brigade will come from the
northern Kurdistani city of Sulaimaniyah. |
Peshmarge (Kurdistan National Guards) |
"We will head to Baghdad soon. We have 3,000
soldiers who are currently undergoing intensive
training especially in urban combat and how the army
should act inside a city," said Brig. Gen. Nazir
Assem Goran, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade,
2nd Division of the Iraqi army that is based in the
city of Erbil.
Goran told The Associated Press he did not know how
the drive in Baghdad would be carried out but said
the Defense Ministry had asked the brigade to take
part in the security operation announced by al-Maliki
a week ago.
Thousands of Iraqi and U.S. troops are expected to
do neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches to clear
the city of Sunni Muslim insurgents and local
militias such as the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army has been
blamed for much of the sectarian killing in the past
months.
"We are going to confront any terrorist elements or
militias. We will confront any outlaws," the general
said.
Goran said his troops would face a language barrier
because 95 percent of the brigade is Kurdish and
unable to speak Arabic. Kurds, a separate ethnic
group, are largely Sunnis but not Arabs.
"I believe that we will bring translators with our
brigade to solve this problem," he said.
The general said his troops
were part of the Iraqi army and do not belong to
local Kurdish militias, known as peshmergas, as some
Iraqi media reports have claimed.
"We do not represent any sect or ethnic group,"
Goran said. "I believe that the plan will include
street battles with militias in residential areas.
It could also include raids that are needed to wipe
out terrorists elements and militias."
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