The
United States and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern
Iraq have signed a military protocol for extensive cooperation in order
to retake Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The
protocol signing ceremony was held in the Salahaddin neighborhood of
Arbil with the attendance of KRG President Masoud Barzani.
U.S.
Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
Elissa Slotkin signed the protocol in the name of the U.S., while KRG
Interior Minister Karim Sinjari also inked the deal.
KRG
spokesperson Ümit Sabah said the deal was a result of cooperation for
the past two years between the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the
international coalition powers fighting against ISIL.
Meanwhile,
a suicide car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in a
Shiite-dominated northeastern district of Baghdad on July 12, killing at
least 12 people, officials said, as government forces were deployed
across much of the Iraqi capital in preparation for a major military
parade later this week.
Five more people died in bombings on the same day elsewhere in Iraq.
In
the July 12 Baghdad bombing, an explosives-laden pickup truck exploded
during the morning rush hour at a vegetable and fruit market in the
al-Rashidiya district, a police officer said. The blast killed 12 and
wounded up to 37, and also damaged several cars, he added.
Elsewhere,
a bomb went off at another outdoor market, this one in the town of
Mahmoudiya, about 30 kilometers south of Baghdad, killing three shoppers
and wounding 10 people, police said. Two more civilians were killed and
nine were wounded in a bombing that targeted a commercial area in the
capital’s southern neighborhood of Dora, police also said.