Bestun Zangana, the head of the Transportation Committee in the Iraqi parliament, told Rudaw of the decision on Wednesday.
Iraq’s Interior Minister Qasim al-Araji was visiting Erbil with an accompanying delegation on Wednesday.
After a six-month blockade, the airports of the Kurdish regional capital, Irbil, and second city Sulaimaniyah will be "reopened to international flights," Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement on Tuesday.
"Local Kurdish authorities [have] accepted that central authorities retake control of the two airports," the statement said.
Kurdish authorities confirmed that airports in Iraqi Kurdistan will return to federal Iraqi control.
International flights to and from the semi-autonomous region’s two main airports in Erbil and Sulaimaniyah were halted on Sept. 29 as part of sanctions imposed on the region after an independence referendum held four days earlier in defiance of Baghdad.
Since the air ban was enforced, all Kurdistan-bound international flights have been rerouted to Baghdad, which has also imposed entry visas to foreigners wishing to visit the Kurdistan region.In October 2017, Iraqi federal forces retook control of the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk and many disputed territories in response to the Kurdish referendum .Kirkuk is not one of the three provinces that have made up the Kurdish region since 2003. However, Kurdish militants used a vacuum created when government troops were fighting against Daesh terrorists to overtake the oil-rich city.
