Arbil, Iraq - A Kurdish parliamentarian on Monday charged that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's description of Iraq as an Arab country was unconstitutional.

Al-Maliki told Arab leaders gathered in Doha, Qatar for the 21st Arab League summit that all Iraqis, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, were agreed that Iraq was an Arab country.

"Al-Maliki's statement ran contrary to the Iraqi constitution," Saad al-Barazanji, deputy head of the Kurdistani Alliance parliamentary bloc, told the Kurdish AKA news agency on Monday.

Arbil, Iraq - The prime minister of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Wednesday blasted the Iraqi petroleum minister for his "failed" policies.

Speaking to reporters at the airport in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on Wednesday on his return from Baghdad, Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region, said Iraqi Petroleum Minister Hussein al-Shahristani's "failed policies" were responsible for the problems in the Iraqi oil sector.

Arbil, Iraq  - Heavy floods in the Choman district of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq left at least three people dead and more than 100 houses destroyed, Choman district leader, Abdul Wahid Giwani, said Friday.

The floods, which took place from late Wednesday through Thursday, also totally destroyed two bridges, cutting access to the district which is situated in the Kurdish province of Arbil, the Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported.

According to Giwani, the bodies of a farmer and his wife and daughter were found.