US, KRG ink military protocol for cooperation against ISIL over Mosul

The protocol signing ceremony was held in the Salahaddin neighborhood of Arbil with the attendance of KRG President Masoud Barzani. 

U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Elissa Slotkin signed the protocol in the name of the U.S., while KRG Interior Minister Karim Sinjari also inked the deal.  

KRG spokesperson Ümit Sabah said the deal was a result of cooperation for the past two years between the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the international coalition powers fighting against ISIL.
 
Meanwhile, a suicide car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in a Shiite-dominated northeastern district of Baghdad on July 12, killing at least 12 people, officials said, as government forces were deployed across much of the Iraqi capital in preparation for a major military parade later this week.

Five more people died in bombings on the same day elsewhere in Iraq.

In the July 12 Baghdad bombing, an explosives-laden pickup truck exploded during the morning rush hour at a vegetable and fruit market in the al-Rashidiya district, a police officer said. The blast killed 12 and wounded up to 37, and also damaged several cars, he added.

Elsewhere, a bomb went off at another outdoor market, this one in the town of Mahmoudiya, about 30 kilometers south of Baghdad, killing three shoppers and wounding 10 people, police said. Two more civilians were killed and nine were wounded in a bombing that targeted a commercial area in the capital’s southern neighborhood of Dora, police also said.