US-led alliance hands over military site to Iraqi army





Baghdad (dpa) – The United States-led alliance fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq handed over a military site to the Iraqi army on Sunday, a military official said.

“The international alliance forces today handed over site No 8 at Camp Taji to the Iraqi troops,” a spokesman for Iraq’s military Joint Operations Command, Tahsin al-Khafaji, told Iraq’s state news agency INA.



The site was used by US, Australian and New Zealand forces to train Iraqi soldiers.
“Other sites [in the camp) will be handed over according to a timetable,” al-Khafaji added without providing more details.
Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, is the eighth military facility handed over by the anti-Islamic State alliance to Iraq over the past months.
The alliance has supported Iraqi forces in a years-long campaign against Islamic State. It has also backed Kurdish forces who defeated the extremist group in neighbouring Syria.
In January, the Iraqi parliament approved a resolution obliging the government to end the presence of foreign troops linked to the anti-Islamic State alliance.
The move came after a US airstrike in Baghdad killed a top Iranian commander, and a deputy head of Iraq's Iran-allied Hashd al-Shaabi militia.
Iraq and the US agreed in June to continue reducing the number of troops stationed in Iraq as part of the anti-Islamic alliance.
On Friday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said the US would withdraw its forces from Iraq over the next three years.

Sunday, August 23rd 2020
(dpa)
           


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