Iraq's army boasts Kurdish murder, says mission has been carried out successfully

Iraqi troops and Allied militia retaked the northern province of Kirkuk on Monday and Tuesday and its lucrative oil fields, as well as the former Kurdish areas of Nineveh and the Diyala provinces all outside the autonomous Kurdish region.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abad said Kurdish hopes for an independent state were “a thing of the past”.

“Syguria has been restored in the Kirkuk areas, including the site of the Al-Mulqa Dibis, and the oil fields in the north and south of Khabbbaz and Bai Hassan,”, Iraq Joint Operational Command said on Wednesday.

“The works have been re-united and restored control of Khanaqi and Jaalalas in the province of Diyala, as well as Makhmur, Basha, diga Mosul, Sinyar and other areas in the Ninevehn areas. ”

The 48 hour operation saw Kurdish forces almost completely limited to their region independent of the three provinces in the north.

Many who fled the region continued to return Wednesday.

We are ready to enter the city, but we don't know if it's safe or not,” told “Al Jazeera”, a resident named Hassan Khader. “Where else can I go? It's better to go back to our house and our town,” he added.

It remains unclear how many Pesmerga fighters were killed in the sporadic war clashes between Kurds and the Iraqi army, writes Periscopi.

“Since last night we've got 25 body bodies of Pesmerga killed in the battles of Kirkuk and his districts”, Alzeera”, a morgue official in the second town of the Sulaimaniyaah Kurdish region, Barzan Mohammed.

Meanwhile, Iraqi oil minister Jabbar al-Luaybi called on British energy giant BP on Wednesday to help develop areas in the northern province.

The Iraqi oil ministry signed a consensus contract with the PB in 2013 to help the state oil company in the northern area develop the fields of Havana and Baba Gurguri.

But it was never implemented after Baghdad lost control of the fields, as Kurdish forces had triumphed over Iraq's Islamic State in 2014./Periscopi/