Peshmerga forces stationed near Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Kurdish Peshmerga forces are now stationed southwest of Kirkuk city with the approval of the commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces Nouri al-Maliki, a senior security official said on Saturday. “Forces from the Peshmerga , which belongs to the Kurdistan Region Border Guards Kurdistan RegionBG), are stationed southwest of Kirkuk, namely near the al-Sina’ie neighborhood,” Brig. Sarhad Qader, the director of the Kirkuk Districts Police Department (KDPD), told IraqiNews.com news agency. Arab and Turkmen members in the Kirkuk Provincial Council told IraqiNews.com that the forces “entered the outskirts of Kirkuk upon a request to the Iraqi government for concerns armed groups might creep into Kirkuk.” A medic in Kirkuk had said on Friday (Feb. 25) that the final tally of casualties in clashes within protests in Kirkuk reached two deaths and 51 wounded. Twenty-two of those wounded were in the district of al-Huweija, (65 km) southwest of Kirkuk, including five policemen. Six of the wounded were in Soliman Pak area, al-Touz district, (80 km) south of Kirkuk. Eyewitnesses coming from the northern Iraq Kurdish cities of Arbil and Sulaimaniya said they saw Peshmerga fighters stationed on the peripheries of Kirkuk. Peshmerga is the term used by Kurds to refer to armed Kurdish fighters. Literally meaning “those who face death” ( Pesh front + marg death), the Peshmerga forces of Kurdistan have been in existence since the advent of the Kurdish independence movement in the early 1920s. Peshmerga forces include women in their ranks. Many Kurds will say that all Kurds willing to fight for their rights are Peshmerga . The oil-rich Kirkuk, a city of mixed Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab population, lies 250 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (TS)/SR 1418