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Iraq Kurds dig trench on Syria border to block militants

By AFP - Apr 15,2014 - Last updated at Apr 15,2014

ERBIL, Iraq — Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region is digging a trench along its border with Syria to prevent the infiltration of militants and smuggling from the war-racked country, officials say.

“The trench is designed to prevent the infiltration of members of terrorist groups and stop smugglers,” Halkurd Mullah Ali, the spokesman for the Kurdish region’s peshmerga security ministry, told AFP.

Smugglers “began operating in these areas because the Syrian authorities lost control of them, and these areas became insecure,” Ali said.

The trench is 17 kilometres long, two metres deep and three metres wide, and is “part of an Iraqi [federal] government strategy” to protecting the country’s 600-kilometre border with Syria.

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