Kurdistan’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs said its troops are not attacking armed groups in Iraq, but are just taking defensive positions. It said the speeches of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki do not scare the Kurds, and that the peshmerga forces did not seize weapons of the Iraqi army that was fleeing the battlefields.
In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Peshmerga Ministry Secretary-General Jabbar Yawar said, “The peshmerga forces are not attacking terrorist groups, and are contenting themselves with taking defensive positions against them, as the distance between us and areas where terrorist groups are present is 1,000 kilometers [620 miles] in length and more than 500-600 kilometers [310-373 miles] in width. Thus, it is difficult to attack them within an area of hundreds of square kilometers.”