WORLD> Top News
|
WORLD> Top News
|
|
Iraq sends thousands more police to Syrian border
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-05 06:01
In Mosul, a city in Iraq's north that remains plagued by violence, a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police patrol Friday night, killing three officers and wounding four civilian bystanders, police said. Besides the violence that persists in areas like Baghdad and Mosul, Iraqi officials are concerned about the potential for conflict between Arabs and Kurds over land and oil in the north. The semiautonomous government of Iraq's Kurdish region issued a statement calling on government ministers in Baghdad to reconsider their decision to postpone a nationwide census meant to resolve the controversies over the size of the country's religious and ethnic communities. The census had been scheduled for October, but the government pushed it back by one year. In particular, the census has implications for decisions over the fate of the oil-rich area of Kirkuk -contested between Kurds and Arabs -as well as the budget allocation for the Kurdish region. Many lawmakers had called for the census to be postponed, arguing that war has caused radical change in the sectarian makeup of many areas and the results could ignite new tensions.
|
