ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdish Peshmerga spokesman on Wednesday denied that troops of the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militia had arrived near Mosul, saying the forces were from the Iraqi army.
Military sources had earlier told Rudaw that heavily armed Hashd troops arrived in the Kurdish town of Shekhan near Mosul late Tuesday night following the deployment of a larger Iraqi army force to the area earlier this week.
Halgurd Hikmat, media director for the Peshmerga, denied the earlier report.
"The two military units from the Iraqi military who have come to the Shekhan areas do not have anything to do with Hashd al-Shaabi,” Hikmat told Rudaw. “They are not Hashd. They are from the Iraqi army who belong to the central government in Baghdad."
Military sources told Rudaw the troops will be based in the strategic Mosul Dam, some 30 kilometers northwest of the ISIS-held city.
Sunni militias known as Hashd al-Watani have been based to the predominantly Sunni heartland of Mosul in northern Iraq.
On Monday, there was a harsh exchange of remarks by the Turkish president and the Iraqi prime minister over the anticipated Mosul operation which Baghdad wants to start without the Turkish military participation.
"We are not your enemy and we will liberate our land through the determination of our men and not by video calls," Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi posted on his Twitter account, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks about Abadi and the looming Mosul offensive.
"The Iraqi prime minister is insulting me, first know your limits," Erdogan told a meeting of Islamic leaders in Istanbul in televised comments Monday warning Abadi.
"Iraq had certain requests from us regarding Bashiqa, and now they are telling us to leave. But the Turkish army has not lost so much standing as to take orders from you," Erdogan added referring to the Iraqi prime minister.
As the Turkish military took over Turkish media outlets in the failed coup of July 15, President Erdogan delivered a speech via Skype insisting that he was still in control of the country, which the Iraqi prime minister was apparently referring to in his rather sarcastic Facebook post.
Abadi has warned that the presence of Turkish troops in Iraq is likely to trigger a "regional war" and called for "immediate withdrawal" of the troops before the Mosul offensive starts.
Several Iraqi leaders have also said the participation of both Shiite and Sunni groups in the operation would likely result in ethnic conflict in the Nineveh Plains which is home to mixed religious and ethnic communities.
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