Arif Taefoor, commander of the Peshmerga forces on the Khazer front, confirmed to Rudaw that they had closed the roads in order to prevent an attack on the Kurdistan Region.
“There are two roads connecting the Kurdistan Region to Mosul, one from Erbil and the other from Duhok. Both have been closed. We are waiting orders from our superiors to open them again,” Taefoor explained.
The roads were closed for just a few hours before being reopened “and the situation returned to normal after a few hours,” a senior Kurdish military official told AFP.
On Wednesday, the Kurdistan Region Security Council announced that Iraqi and Hashd al-Shaabi forces southwest of Kirkuk and north of Mosul were preparing for a major attack on the Kurdistan Region.
The threat is a dramatic escalation of tensions between Kurdistan and Iraq after the September 25 independence vote.
