In Iraq, clashes near Mosul base kill 18 IS militants

Clashes between a joint Turkish-Iraqi force and Islamic State militants near a training camp outside the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have left at least 18 IS fighters dead, the Turkish president and a former Iraqi governor said today.
The fighting erupted late yesterday outside the Bashiqa camp, which was at the center of a controversy last month when Turkey moved troops there to protect Turkish trainers aiding local Sunni fighters hoping to take back Mosul from the Islamic State group.
Baghdad has demanded that Turkish troops withdraw, describing their presence as a violation of international law. Ankara has pulled some troops out but not all.

Turkish President Erdogan said today that IS tried to infiltrate Bashiqa, triggering the clashes. Former Iraqi governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, who founded the training camp, said the attack was preempted.
But the commander of the training camp, Maj Gen. Mohammed Yahya, told The Associated Press that he was at the camp yesterday night and there were no such clashes. "There were airstrikes on IS targets, but there's always airstrikes. Our troops were not involved in any fighting," he insisted.
Meanwhile, a commander with the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces at the frontline near the training camp said airstrikes killed 16 IS fighters yesterday night. The commander, Saeed Mamuzini, said he was not aware of any fighting between the Sunni-Turkish forces and the IS group.

The disparate accounts of the events yesterday night could not immediately be reconciled.
Meanwhile in Syria, an Islamic State fighter shot and killed his mother after the extremist group told him she was a non-believer, activists said.
According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the Syrian conflict, the 20-year-old fighter killed his mother in front of a large gathering in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate.