Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Iraq could not deal alone with driving ISIS from the city of Mosul.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Iraq could not deal alone with driving ISIS from the city of Mosul.

Erdogan also defended the presence of Turkish forces in a nearby military camp as an insurance against attacks on Turkey.

Turkey has been locked in a fierce row with Iraq’s central government over the presence of Turkish troops at the Bashiqa camp in northern Iraq, and over who should take part in the planned US-backed assault on Mosul.

Speaking at a ceremony in the Black Sea town of Rize, Erdogan said Turkey would not allow ISIS or any other organization to control Mosul. He also said Turkish-backed rebels in neighboring Syria were advancing on the ISIS-held village of Dabiq in the country’s northwest.

Around 60,000-strong force made of Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces are now finalizing plans to attack ISIS’s last stronghold in Iraq’s Mosul, London-based The Guardian reported on Friday.

As the assault to liberate Mosul looms, ISIS claimed a suicide bombing that targeted a Shiite Muslim gathering in Baghdad, killing at least 31 people and wounding more than 50 on Saturday.

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