Celebrations continued until the early hours of Tuesday in Erbil, capital of the Kurdish region, which was lit by fireworks and adorned with Kurdish red-white-green flags. In ethnically-mixed Kirkuk, where Arabs and Turkmen opposed the vote, local Kurdish-led authorities lifted an overnight curfew imposed to maintain control. Iraqi soldiers joined Turkish troops for military exercises in southeast Turkey on Tuesday near the border with Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Iranian Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a top military adviser to the Supreme Leader, called on “the four neighboring countries to block land borders” with the Iraqi Kurdish region, according to state news agency IRNA. “The referendum does not mean independence will happen tomorrow, nor are we redrawing borders,” he said in Erbil on Monday.

Source: bd News24 September 26, 2017 08:37 UTC