IRGC-linked factions step up activity against Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Armed factions in Iraq with links to Iran have increased accusations against Kurds in the country’s autonomous region and may have been behind some recent attacks on them.
Kurdish peshmerga forces learn battlefield first aid techniques from a military doctor during a medical training session on Nov. 3, 2015, in Erbil, Iraq.
Kurdish peshmerga forces learn battlefield first aid techniques from a military doctor during a medical training session on Nov. 3, 2015, in Erbil, Iraq. The Kurdish troops, many of them frontline veterans, are rotated in for the 5-week program. Coalition forces from Europe and the United States are training peshmerga and Iraqi army troops in the fight against the Islamic State. - John Moore/Getty Images
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Shelly Kittleson
@shellykittleson
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BAGHDAD — Iran-linked Shiite armed groups operating in Iraq have recently stepped up their messaging against, and possibly attacks on, forces operating in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) amid accusations of their enjoying overly close relations with the United States.

The Iran-linked "muqawama" (resistance) factions are also unhappy about the close ties between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey, in part linked to these factions’ increasingly close relations with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Sinjar region in northwestern Iraq.

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