The President of Iraq's Kurdish region says the controversial referendum on support for independence will go forward Monday, despite increasingly urgent calls from the international community to delay the vote. Iraqi and Kurdish forces are continuing to clear the last pockets of territory that IS holds in Iraq. Plans to retake the town of Hawija there have been complicated by political wrangling among Iraq's disparate security forces. The town and the governorate are disputed between Baghdad and the northern Kurdish autonomous region, where a referendum on independence is scheduled to take place next week. Iraqi Kurdish leaders are pressing ahead with the referendum, which Baghdad dismisses as illegal.

Source: Fox News September 22, 2017 15:49 UTC