Iraq says Iran to release nine detained coastguards
Iran on Thursday will hand over nine Iraqi coastguards who Baghdad says were “kidnapped” by Iranian forces in their tidal water frontier last weekend, the regional governor of Iraq’s Basra province said. “The nine will be delivered to the Iraqi side at 2:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) today,” governor Mohammed al-Waili told Reuters. Waili said on Tuesday that the Iraqi coastguards had boarded an Iranian-skippered ship suspected of smuggling oil in Iraqi waters when they were overpowered by an Iranian patrol. Full Story