(MENAFN) The ban on international flights to and from the autonomous Kurdish region has been extended by Iraq on Monday.
After the latter held an independence referendum in September that overwhelmingly backed secession from the rest of Iraq, tensions between Baghdad and Erbil intensified.
The ban, scheduled to be lifted on February 28, has been extended by three months, a senior official at Erbil airport said.
"We have been informed by the civil aviation authority in Baghdad that the ban on international flights to and from Erbil and Sulaimaniyah airports has been extended until the end of May," he said.
"Only internal flights are authorized."
It's worth mentioning that Baghdad continuously confirmed that airports on Kurdistan would reopen once the central government was given "complete control" over them and that "the control of border crossings should be exclusively in the power of federal authority".
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