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Two Kurdish Peshmerga brigades deployed in
Kirkuk to protect power grid
9.10.2007
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October
9, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', -- Two
Peshmerga brigades will be sent to the northern
Iraqi city of Kirkuk to protect power lines
supplying Iraq's Kurdistan region with electricity,
a spokesman for the Peshmerga Forces' General
Command said on Monday.
"The two brigades will safeguard Kirkuk-Baiji
electricity lines, which have been subject to
several attacks from armed groups," Jabbar Yawer
said during a press conference in Sulaimaniyah.
"The Kurdish command discussed the matter with the
Iraqi government a few months ago and received an
approval to send two brigades to the city after the
Eid al-Fitr (Lesser Bairam)," Yawer indicated,
noting that the central government pledged to arm
the brigades.
"The agreement was reached during a meeting between
Kurdistan's border guard forces, U.S. forces, and
the Iraqi Ministry of Defense on October 6 in
Erbil," he added.
VOI
* Kirkuk city is a
Kurdish city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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