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4 border checkpoints set up in Iraq’s Kurdistan

September 29, 2008 - 09:38:52

BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Four model border checkpoints were be set up in the Iraqi Kurdistan region within the Border Guards Command’s 1st Zone in Arbil, Iraq’s Border Guard Forces Commander, Mohsen Abdelhassan, said on Monday.
“The Border Forces also embarked on setting up seven floating border checkpoints in the marsh areas in Missan province within the Border Guards Command’s 4th Zone,” Abdelhassan told Aswat al-Iraq.
The command personnel are working hard with the aim of securing the border road that links the areas of Jallat, al-Tayyib and Akhzina, he said.
Arbil, also written Erbil or Irbil, is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited in the world and is one of the largest cities in Iraq. The city lies eighty kilometers (fifty miles) east of Mosul. In 2005, its estimated population was 990,000 inhabitants. The city is the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). It hosts the headquarters of the Kurdistan region ministers and parliament.
Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, only isolated, sporadic violence has hit Arbil, unlike many other areas of Iraq. Parallel bomb attacks against the Eid celebrations arranged by the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and KRG President Massoud Barazani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) killed 109 people on February 1, 2004. Responsibility was claimed by the Islamist group Ansar al-Sunnah, and stated to be in solidarity with the Kurdish Islamist faction Ansar al-Islam. Another bombing on May 4, 2005 killed 60 civilians. Despite these bombings the population generally feels safe.

AmR (S)

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