Turkey admitted that it has stationed several hundred troops in northern Iraq to "protect it's interests." These troops have long operated openly, guarding airports from attacks by Turkish Kurdish separatists.

Iraqi Kurds who were settled in Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, are leaving and moving south. The government has, over the last few years, forces Kurdish families north into the Kurdish controlled zone, and replaced them with Iraqi Arabs from  the south.

US warplanes bombed radars and missile launchers in the south.