{"id":330998,"date":"2017-10-18T11:09:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T10:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/seizing-kirkuk\/"},"modified":"2017-10-18T11:09:17","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T10:09:17","slug":"seizing-kirkuk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/seizing-kirkuk\/","title":{"rendered":"Seizing Kirkuk"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_96822\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-96822\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/10\/Screen-Shot-2017-10-17-at-5.17.48-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"302\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Kenny Cole | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC by 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Elite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/Iraq\">Iraqi<\/a> security forces have captured the Kurdish government headquarters buildings in the centre of Kirkuk\u00a0with\u00a0the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordering\u00a0the Iraqi flag to be raised over Kirkuk and other disputed territories. An Iraqi Oil Ministry official said that it would be \u201ca very short time\u201d before the Iraqi military seized all the oilfields in Kirkuk province.<\/p>\n<p>The century-old movement for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/kurdish-independence-referendum\">Kurdish independence<\/a> has suffered\u00a0a calamitous defeat as Iraqi military forces retake the Kirkuk oil province, facing little resistance so far from the Peshmerga fighters. Kurdish officials accuse part of the forces belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main Kurdish parties, of \u201ctreason\u201d in not resisting the Iraqi assault.<\/p>\n<p>Iraqi Kurdish dreams of achieving real independence depended on controlling the oil wealth of Kirkuk which is now lost to them, probably forever. Such autonomy as they did have will be curtailed, with Turkey announcing that it will hand over control of the border gate between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan to the central government in Baghdad.<\/p>\n<p>The Iraqi government operation began early on Monday morning as troops swiftly seized two major oilfields and the headquarters of the North Oil Company. A convoy of armoured vehicles from Baghdad\u2019s highly-trained and experienced Counter-Terrorism Force, which led the attack in the battle for Mosul, drove unopposed to the quarter of Kirkuk&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/10\/18\/seizing-kirkuk\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Kenny Cole | CC by 2.0 Elite Iraqi security forces have captured the Kurdish government headquarters buildings in the centre of Kirkuk\u00a0with\u00a0the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordering\u00a0the Iraqi flag to be raised over Kirkuk and other disputed territories. An Iraqi Oil Ministry official said that it would be \u201ca very short time\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-330998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}