Baghdad: Iraq’s joint operations command on Monday denied Turkey was participating in military operations to retake the northern city of Mosul from Daesh.
“The spokesman of the Joint Operations Command denies Turkish participation of any kind in operations for the liberation of Nineveh,” a statement said, referring to the Iraqi province of which Mosul is the capital.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters on Sunday that Turkish troops stationed outside Mosul had provided support “with artillery, tanks and howitzers” following a request by Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
Thousands of Peshmerga forces are currently involved in a massive push in the Bashiqa area northeast of Mosul, where Turkey has a military base.
The forces of the autonomous Kurdish region, whose leader has close ties with Turkey, have complained recently that the US-led coalition’s air support as insufficient.
Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi is under domestic pressure not to be seen as tolerating the presence on his soil of troops from a country many in Iraq see as having abetted the rise of the terror group.
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter visited Baghdad on Saturday and Arbil, the Kurdish capital, on Sunday.
He had suggested before his visit to Iraq that Turkey should be given a role in the Mosul offensive, Iraq’s biggest military operation in years.
But speaking after a meeting with Carter, Al Abadi swiftly rejected the idea.
“I know that the Turks want to participate ... We tell them ‘thank you, this is something the Iraqis will handle and the Iraqis will liberate Mosul’,” he said.
Iran on Monday waded into the dispute saying Turkey should get permission from Iraq’s government to participate in the operation.
Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said that “it is not acceptable at all if a country, under the pretext of combating terrorism or any other crimes, tries to violate the sovereignty” of another country.
Iraqi forces advancing on Mosul meanwhile faced stiff resistance from Daesh. Federal forces and Peshmerga fighters were moving forward in several areas, but the terrorists were hitting back with shelling, sniper fire, suicide car bombs and booby traps.
On the eastern side of Mosul, federal troops were battling Daesh on Monday in Qaraqosh, which used to be the largest Christian town in the country.
Army forces entered the town for the third day running but armoured convoys deployed around it were met with shelling from inside.
Federal forces also scored gains on the southern front, where they have been making quick progress, taking one village after another as they work their way up the Tigris Valley.
In the western town of Rutba, Daesh “executed” five Iraqis, including members of the security forces, army officers said Monday.
Daesh launched an attack on Rutba, a remote but strategic town near the Jordanian border in Al Anbar province, early on Sunday.
They briefly seized the mayor’s office before being pinned back by the security forces but were still deployed in some other neighbourhoods of the town, the officers said.
“Daesh controls Mithaq and Intisar neighbourhoods in central Rutba,” an army colonel said.
“They captured people — civilians and policemen — and executed them,” he said. “At least five people were executed” on Sunday, the colonel said.