Turkey won't pull back troops deployed to Mosul (Official)

Turkey will not withdraw troops it has deployed near an area controlled by the Islamic State group, a senior Turkish official said, after Iraq ordered the immediate withdrawal of its latest contingent.

Turkey deployed up to 300 soldiers to the Bashiqa area near the city of Mosul, the jihadist group's main hub in Iraq, describing it as a routine rotation in its programme of training Iraqis to retake the city from IS.

But Baghdad on Sunday gave Turkey 48 hours to withdraw its forces, saying they had entered the country illegally and threatening to appeal to the UN Security Council.

"We expect them to remain," the official told a group of foreign media representatives in Istanbul.

"It will depend on discussions but obviously our forces, as we know from the officers on the ground, from the demands of different groups over there, from what we are discussing with the central government and from what we have discussed with the KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), they will stay," he said...
AFP
ahram.org.eg
7/12/15
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