The Wall Street Journal: Iraqi forces move against Kurdish fighters in wake of independence vote

Iraqi forces clashed with fighters from the Kurdish semiautonomous region near the oil-rich province of Kirkuk early Monday, raising the stakes in a standoff over Kurdish independence, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said.

Before dawn, units from Iraq’s Shiite-majority Popular Mobilization Forces as well as elite Iraqi military units moved toward Kirkuk on the orders of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Kurdish Peshmerga troops reacted to the advances, provoking clashes before sunrise.

An Iraqi military official said four Iraqi army vehicles were burned in the clashes, and a number of injured had arrived at Kirkuk’s general hospital. The Iraqi forces were passing through a village named Jerdaglu when an explosion destroyed the vehicles, he said.

The clashes follow a referendum in which the Kurds, who run their own semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence, defying Baghdad, regional powers and the U.S, which warned it would distract from the final battles to defeat Islamic State.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

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