Sabah Hawrami, Director General of Sulaimani Health Directory, said that 482 cases of diarrhea and vomiting have been admitted to hospitals in the past 24 hours, and they were discharged after treatment.

The Kurdistan region has recorded a large number of cases with symptoms such as diarrhea and vomiting. Over 5,800 cases with vomiting and diarrhea were recorded in Sulaimani and Halabja hospitals. On June 19, two inmates from Sulaimani adult corrections facility died due to cholera, a source within the prison told KurdSat News.

The Belarusian committee of inquiry said in a statement that it had provided evidence and information to an Iraqi delegation in Minsk, about the killing of a number of refugees by Polish troops, that include Iraqi refugees. They were buried on the Belarusian-Polish border, the statement noted. 

The Belarusian committee also briefed the Iraqi delegation on the “crimes” committed by Polish soldiers against 135 Iraqi refugees who were injured by violence.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Sahaf, said in a statement that the Iraqi parliament's foreign relations committee has asked the government to request an international investigation.

Last year over 5000 thousand Iraqi refugees were trapped at the Polish-Belarusian border, trying to cross to the European Union. The Kurdistan region government brought back some of the refugees, while a number of them stayed at refugee camps provided by the Belarusian government.

Iraqi Planning Ministry spokeswoman Abdul Zahra Handawi said in a statement that the ministry would announce a new policy for the population next month to regulate reproduction and help reproductive health.

"There is no such thing as limiting population growth, and the ministry has no such intentions," he confirmed.

According to figures from the Census Center of the Ministry of Planning, the population of Iraq is more than 42 million 500 thousand people, while it was only 24 million in 2003, an almost two-fold increase after the collapse of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq grapples with numerous challenges, notably food and water scarcity; Baghdad is concerned with feeding its rapidly growing population. 

Iraq globally ranks 38th in population growth and one of the highest in the Middle East and Eurasia. 

Sadiq Mohammed, the mayor of Qadir Karam district in Kikruk, told Kurdsat News that an explosion was heard in the village of Kormor near Dana Gas headquarters, at 04:45 pm local time. The local authorities are investigating the incident, the explosion was mortar shells fire at the energy company. 

Dana Gas is a energy company that owns large reserves of natural gas in the Kurdistan region. It operates in the Kormor gas field that constitutes almost half of the region's gas production. 

"A Turkish military base in Amedi’s Bamarne village was hit by mortar shells, and the base shelled the area that the rockets originated from,” KurdSat News correspondent reported. No causalities are known so far, the correspondent added.

Since early June, the base has been targeted three times, and the Turkish military outpost has been there for the last 25 years. Turkey maintains over 50 military bases and outposts on the Turkish-Kurdistan region border to prevent PKK crossing into Turkey.

Yesterday, June 20, another 16-year-old Yazidi girl named Rusita Haji Pacho, was rescued from the hands of ISIS terrorists in Syria, Hussein Qaidi, head of Yazidi rescue office, told Kurdsat News.

He noted that 3,553 Yazidis have been rescued from the hands of terrorists in Sinjar, while the fate of 2,718 people is still unknown.

Since the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2018, the search for abducted Yazidi women is continuous. 

On Monday, in a televised press conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that his country is ready to reach a "good agreement" with world powers.

However, according to Reuters, he blamed the United States for the stalled talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

"Until today, we are ready to return to Vienna to reach a good agreement if Washington fulfills its obligations," Khatibzadeh said.

The US State Department announced last Tuesday that the United States is waiting for a constructive response from Iran regarding reviving the agreement, noting the need to return to the agreement before Tehran acquires a nuclear bomb.

While the Director of the International Atomic Agency, Rafael Grossi, had confirmed that negotiations with Iran to revive the nuclear agreement had reached a dead end.

Grossi said, "Iran had not responded to the three traces of uranium found in secret sites, stressing the need to provide precise details because verification and inspection are essential parts of the agency's work in Iranian nuclear facilities."

The Vienna talks, launched in April 2021, to revive the nuclear agreement had been suspended since last March after failing to resolve several files.

The situation worsened after the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency issued last week a US-European resolution officially criticizing Iran for its lack of cooperation, after a previous report last month in which the agency confirmed that it had not obtained "clarifications" regarding traces of enriched uranium found in three unauthorized sites.

Tehran responded to the agency's decision last Wednesday by closing 27 cameras dedicated to monitoring its nuclear activities.

Today, June 20, Muhamad Ahmad Erbili passed away at 89. Erbili was in the hospital for the past weeks. 

KurdSat Broadcasting Corporation expressed condolences to Erbili's family. Many people on Social Media expressed their grievances about Erbili's passing.

Muhamad Ahmad Erbili, or Muhamad Ahmad Sheikh Fathi, was a singer and Maqam singer who passed away on Monday, June 20, 2022, at Erbil's Zhin Hospital due to a deteriorating health condition.

Erbili began singing in 1944 when he was a primary school student. He published numerous albums and songs. Erbili sung in Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic, becoming famous for his song "Yalla Shofer," later repeated by Ibrahim Tatlises, the most popular Turkish singer and one of the most popular in the world.

 

Hawar News Agency reported that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) held its ninth Congress on November 18 and 19 and elected Asia Abdullah and Salih Muslim as the new co-chairpersons of the party. The congress was held in Hasakah with the participation of 700 representatives and party members.

The People's Protection Units, PYD, is the backbone of the US-back Syrian democratic forces that control east and north Syria. Salih Muslim was a popular Kurdish leader in Rojava and the most popular Kurdish representative in the Syrian War. At 70, he leads one of the most active Kurdish movements in the Middle East. 

Muslim attended primary school in Kobane. He got a chemical engineering degree at Istanbul Technical University. A father of five children, in 2010, he was appointed party leader at the fourth congress of PYD. In 2013, Sharvan Muslim, a Muslim's son, was killed in the fighting to liberate the Rojava.

Muslim's reelection as PYD co-chairman would anger Ankara as the Turkish authorities want him. In 2018, Muslim was detained by Czech authorities on a warrant from Turkey. Turkey has asked several European countries to extradite Muslim.

In February 2018, Turkey elevated Muslim to its most-wanted list and offered a $1 million reward for his capture. He faces 30 life sentences if convicted.

During the EU foreign ministers' endorsement of the strategic partnership document with the Gulf countries, that the Gulf countries are a reliable partner to supply energy and ensure the balance of the global market.

Last month, the European Union unveiled a new document to enhance cooperation with the Gulf states, in the areas of energy, green transformation, trade, economic diversification, regional stability and global security, and humanitarian and development challenges.

The document issued in the name of "Prosperity Partnership" and adopted by the High Representative of the European Union and the European Commission, and endorsed today by the Union's foreign ministers, is concerned with the strategic partnership with the Gulf states, and aims to expand and deepen joint cooperation.

The document touched on the free trade agreement with the Gulf states, whose discussions were suspended in 2008, saying, "The European Union's framework for free trade agreements has been developed and currently includes ambitious provisions on sustainable development, the gradual abolition of export duties and other measures that distort trade and investments."

The document also indicated that the partnership between the European Union and the GCC countries represents 20 percent of the global economy, 17.5 percent of global trade, and covers more than half of global foreign direct investments.

In 2020, the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries were the largest import partner and the fourth largest export partner, with rates of 17.8 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively, and thus the two parties achieved a distinguished trade and investment relationship, the document explains.

According to the document, the EU will seek to strengthen EU-GCC cooperation on economic integration, a business environment and sustainable investment, where enterprises can compete on the basis of their advantages and equal opportunities and address unfair trade, practices and subsidies that distort competition.

"The operational efforts with the Turkish security forces have paid off," Bennett added in a press briefing." In recent days, and in a joint Israeli-Turkish effort, we have thwarted a number of terrorist attempts and many terrorists were arrested on Turkish soil," Jerusalem Post reported.

He also said that Israel and Turkey are working very closely together to stop Iran's attempt to harm the Israelis, and thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for his efforts.

The PM made it clear that work is underway with the aim of returning tourism relations between Turkey and Israeli to normal. "We have to end anti-terror operations," he said.

Bennett warned that Israel "will continue to reveal the true face of Iran," saying that there will be a reaction to anyone who tries to harm the Israelis.

He added that "the days when Iran financed terrorism and provided the terrorists with equipment and training and were left safe are over," reiterating his words that "the one who sends the terrorists pays the price. We will go anywhere we need it."

About 2,000 Israelis are still in Turkey today, down from 5,000 earlier in the week, prior to the discovery of those cells.

These developments came after Iran had repeatedly warned during the past few days that it would inevitably respond to the "assassinations carried out by Israel on Iranian soil" recently, especially after the killing of a Colonel in the Revolutionary Guards, Hassan Sayyad Khodayari.

Noting that the Israeli authorities, as usual, did not confirm or deny responsibility for the assassination of Khodayari or other guardsmen who fell during the past few days in strange and suspicious ways.

Direct confrontations between Iran and Israel in the Middle East have become a norm. In early June, Iran claimed to have killed Ilak Ron, believed to be at the top of Israel's assassination unit, known as Kidon.

Family Mall in Sulaimani installed solar system which can provide electricity for 6 hours daily for the shopping destination through solar power.

The system is installed on Family Mall’s building on an area of 1,200 meters and can provide 2.2 MW of electricity, more than the amount of electricity Family Mall needs.

To celebrate the installation of its new system, Family Mall hosted an opening ceremony attended by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Qubad Talabani.

During the ceremony, KRG Deputy PM said, “We must encourage companies to use natural energy, we make the environment a priority.”

“Our patriotism today must be to protect the environment, to protect our land, to protect our water and air. This must become a political issue for all of us,” he said.

Ali Hama Salih, a member of the Kurdistan Region Parliament said on Facebook, that the depth of tube wells in Erbil has increased from 120 meters to 700 meters in 26 years, a seven fold. In the next two years, the depth will lower to 1000 meters and that will leave half of Erbil without water.

He revealed that the main reason was drilling a large number of wells during this period. Apartments and residential projects largely rely on groundwater. A large number of gardens and villas in Erbil suburbs have drilled wells independently.

Solving the problem, the lawmaker wrote, requires the government to accelerate laying of water pipes to all neighborhoods and residential projects that rely on groundwater, and to install water networks within the neighborhoods.

The Kurdistan region is facing low precipitation rates, and many regions have declared draught. Erbil lies in a relatively dry plateau and continuous drilling of wells in the city has drained Erbil’s underground water.