Civil flights stop over Kurdistan after Iraq threatens to down them

Baghdad threatened Friday to send its fighter jets to shoot down any civilian flights heading in to land at Kurdistan Regional government airfields in northern Iraq, in retaliation for last week’s Kurdish independence referendum. By Saturday, the international airfields of Irbil and Sulaymaniyeh had emptied out. Iraqi forces were also reported to be blocking the main roads from Mosul to the Kurdish town of Dohuk and from Kirkuk to Baghdad.