Iraqi forces and the Popular Mobilization Forces - pro-Baghdad paramilitary units - swept into the oil-rich Kirkuk region in October 2017 following Kurdistan’s Sept. Germany has a contingent of military advisers in the region training the Peshmerga, a mission which Berlin briefly paused given the row with Baghdad. Knocking out a U.S.-made Iraqi tank with a German anti-tank missile destined for the war with ISIS comes with political sensitivities. The Peshmerga denied using MILANs in the clash, and the German Defense Ministry would not confirm nor deny use of the missiles against the Iraqi tank. Iraq’s Kurdish region possesses few tanks of its own - older T-55s captured after the collapse of the Saddam regime in 2003, and no match for M-1s. The Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command accused the Peshmerga of targeting the tank with a wire-guided MILAN anti-tank missile launcher, which Germany supplied by the dozens to the Peshmerga for use against Islamic State’s up-armored suicide bomb vehicles. It was an especially noteworthy clash given that Western allies supplied many of Iraqi Kurdistan’s anti-tank missiles and Iraq’s Abrams tanks. 20, 2017, the Kurdish Peshmerga claimed to have destroyed an Iraqi M-1A1 Abrams tank during fighting in Kirkuk province and took grainy video footage to prove it.
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