An attempted attack by Daesh on a military base in northern Iraq shows Turkey’s decision to deploy troops there was justified, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, suggesting Russia was stirring up a row over the issue.
Turkey deployed a force protection unit of around 150 troops to northern Iraq in December citing heightened security risks near Bashiqa, where its soldiers have been training an Iraqi militia to fight Daesh. Baghdad objected to the troop deployment, however.
The head of the Sunni militia said his fighters and Turkish forces launched a joint “pre-emptive” attack on Daesh, 10 km south of the base on Wednesday because the militants were building capacity to launch rockets at it.
“Our forces managed to detect the position of these rockets so they conducted a preemptive strike,” Atheel Al-Nujaifi, former governor of the nearby Islamic State-controlled city of Mosul, told Reuters.
“This operation was ended without a single rocket being launched at the camp,” he said. Erdogan said no Turkish soldiers were harmed while 18 Daesh militants were killed.
“This incident shows what a correct step it was, the one regarding Bashiqa. It is clear that with our armed soldiers there, our officers giving the training are prepared for anything at any time,” he told reporters in Istanbul.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi accused Ankara last week of failing to respect an agreement to withdraw its troop deployment, while majority-Shiite Iraq’s foreign minister said Baghdad could resort to military action if forced.
Erdogan said the problems over the deployment only started after Turkey’s relations with Russia soured in the wake of Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter jet over Syria in November.
“They (Iraq) asked us to train their soldiers and showed us this base as the venue. But as we see, afterwards, once there were problems between Russia and Turkey ... these negative developments began,” Erdogan said. Turkey, he said, was acting in line with international law. The camp in Iraq’s Nineveh province, to which Turkey has historic ties, is situated around 140 km south of the Turkish border.
Meanwhile, Daesh said on Friday its members had carried out an attack on Israeli tourists in Cairo in response to a call by the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, to target Jews “everywhere.” The group said in a statement released on the Internet that light arms were used in the attack, which took place on Thursday outside a Cairo hotel. Security sources said the tourists were Israeli Arabs.
Source :Arab News