Shafaq News- Basra/ Erbil
Eighteen Chinese oil experts left Iraq “temporarily” on Saturday through the Safwan border crossing in Basra province following escalating military exchanges between Israel and the United States on one side and Iran on the other, a local official told Shafaq News.
The source confirmed that the group worked for a single oil company and that other foreign experts exited around the same time, opting to return to their home countries until the situation becomes clearer and seeking to secure travel arrangements before any possible disruption of regional air traffic.
Meanwhile, Oslo-listed DNO suspended its oil production in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq after the military escalation. “We've been preparing for the hard stop of operations for the last several weeks. Today, as a precautionary measure, we temporarily stopped operations and moved our people to safe locations,” Executive Chairman Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani told Reuters.
The development came after coordinated US and Israeli strikes targeted sites inside Iran, which Washington described as action against “imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” Tehran, according to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), responded with missile and drone strikes on Israel and US military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, with media outlets also reporting attacks on bases in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi Kurdistan.
In Iraq, Iran-backed factions Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Harakat al-Nujaba declared their entry into the conflict. Kataib Hezbollah pledged attacks on US military bases in response to what it called “American aggression” after Iraq’s Joint Operations Command confirmed two waves of airstrikes against the Popular Mobilization Forces headquarters in Jurf al-Sakhr, north of Babil, killing two members and wounding six.
Read more: Zero-sum game: Can the Iran-Israel conflict push Iraq toward frontline?