Arbil: Iran has supplied weapons and ammunition to Iraqi Kurdish forces, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif here.
The direct arming of Kurdish forces is a contentious issue since Iraqi politicians suspect Kurdish leaders have aspirations to break away from the central government completely. The move is also seen as Iran’s taking a more direct role in broader Iraqi conflict.
"We asked for weapons and Iran was the first country to provide us with weapons and ammunition," Barzani said.
Militants from the Islamic State have clashed with Kurdish peshmerga fighters in recent weeks and taken control of some areas of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Earlier in the day, a car bomb was detonated in a mainly Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 28, police and medical sources said. The bombing in the New Baghdad neighborhood followed a series of blasts in the Iraqi capital on Monday which killed more than 20 people.
The Islamic State, which controls large swathes of northern and western Iraq, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in the New Baghdad neighborhood on Monday. IS said in a statement that the attack was carried out as revenge for the Sunni mosque attack in Diyala, on Friday, which killed 68 and wounded dozens.
The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session in Geneva on Monday concerning abuses being committed by Islamic State and other militant groups in Iraq, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The Iranian foreign minister held talks with Barzani on Tuesday, one day after visiting senior Shi’ite clerics in southern Iraq. Zarif acknowledged giving military assistance to Iraqi security forces but said the cooperation did not include deploying ground troops in the country. Neither Zarif nor Barzani gave any details on whether weapons supplied to Kurdish peshmerga forces had been routed through the central government or given directly to Kurdish forces.
Britain, France, Germany and Italy have also promised to send military assistance to Kurdish security forces to fight the Islamic State. The United States has carried out a series of air strikes against the Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq in the past two weeks, partly to protect the Kurdish region from being overrun.