BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – Iraqi resistance group Harakat Hezbollah Nujaba has threatened to target Zionist positions and U.S. military bases in the country’s northern Kurdistan region.
In a statement, Akram al-Kaabi, the founder and secretary-general of the movement, said Zionist and American installations in an area controlled by Masoud Barzani-led Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) could be a target.
“By hosting the U.S. military bases and the positions of the (Zionist regime’s) spy agency Mossad, leaders of the Iraqi Kurdistan region have not only compromised the security of the northern Iraqi people but have also turned the area, infested with spies and occupying forces, into a legitimate target for Iraqi resistance groups,” the statement read.
Sabereen News, the media conglomerate affiliated with the resistance factions in Iraq, published the statement, reporting that Nujaba’s foreign relations unit has threatened Barzani, the veteran Kurdish politician who has been at the helm of KDP since 1979.
A caricature accompanying the statement showed the smiling face of Barzani, with two crows marked as the Zionist regime and the U.S. sitting on his head, while he invites other evil crows to his sphere of influence.
It also depicted the commander of the Nujaba resistance movement ordering his forces to smash the nests of crows perched atop the Kurdish leader’s head.
Last December, Iraqi lawmaker Ali al-Fatlawi said it would be legitimate for the country’s anti-terror resistance groups, which are part of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) or Hashd al-Sha’abi, to force U.S.-led military forces to withdraw from the Arab country.
He said the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq was non-negotiable, especially as former Iraqi premier Adel Abdul-Mahdi had asked for it and the parliament also passed a resolution calling for the full withdrawal of the occupying forces.
On Saturday, Iraq’s state-run North Oil Company said Peshmerga forces from the regional Kurdish government had occupied some oil wells in northern Kirkuk.
The forces, it said, arrived with a technical team from the Kurdish region and took over some of the oil wells in the Bai Hassan oilfield, which is operated by the North Oil Company.
Kirkuk’s oilfields had been under Kurdish control since 2014, when the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of Daesh. Iraqi forces took back control of the fields in 2017 following a referendum on Kurdish secession.