Iraq demands withdrawal of Turkish troops from area near Mosul

The Iraqi government on Saturday demanded withdrawal of Turkish troops deployed near the city of Mosul as part of training mission without permission of the Iraqi side.

"A battalion of tanks and artillery entered the Iraqi territory specifically, in Nineveh province under the pretext of training Iraqi groups without the request or authorization from the Iraqi federal authorities," Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office said in a statement posted on his website.

"This is a serious breach of Iraqi sovereignty, which is not consistent with the good neighborly relations between Iraq and Turkey," the statement said.

The statement came after media reports said a Turkish training battalion equipped with armored vehicles deployed near the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, which is under control of Islamic State (IS) militant group.

The Turkish troops were supposed to provide training to Iraqi paramilitary groups at a camp near Mosul in order to participate in liberating the city from the extremist IS militants.

The Iraqi statement also called on Turkey to "respect good neighborly relations and to withdraw immediately from the Iraqi territory."

The IS group took control of Mosul in June 2014.

Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, has been under IS control since June 11, when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and the IS group, which captured Mosul and large parts of the province and later seized swathes of territories in other predominantly Sunni provinces. Endit