3rd Division (Iraq)
Iraqi Army division
The 3rd Division was a formation of the Iraqi Army. It was active by 1941, disbanded along with the rest of the Iraqi Army in 2003, but reactivated by 2005.
History
Before being disbanded in 2003, the previous 3rd Division had been one of the four original divisions of the Iraqi Army, being active in 1941 during the Anglo-Iraqi War. The division's most notable activity in the war came on 22 May when the division's 6th Infantry Brigade staged a counterattack against British forces in Fallujah which was repulsed.
In July 1958, elements of the division had overthrown the Iraqi government in the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état, with Abd al-Karim Qasim, commander of the 20th Infantry Brigade (or armoured brigade) stationed near Ba'quba, the originator of the coup. However, the actual overthrow was led by a battalion commander, Abdul Salam Arif, in the 19th Infantry Brigade.
Sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, the division was converted into the 3rd Armoured Division, which was deployed to the 1967 Six-Day War. Iraqi participation in the Six-Day War was limited, principally owing to the slow reaction of the 3rd Armoured Division, which had been stationed in eastern Jordan. The 3rd Armoured Division did not organise itself and reach the front line before the Jordanians ceased operations. Later during the events of Black September in Jordan, 1970, the division was still stationed in northeast Jordan.
The public source identifies “3rd Division (Iraq)” as iraqi Army division. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Division, Iraq and Iraqi.
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This entry incorporates text from “3rd Division (Iraq)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.