Iraqi Airways (IA, Baghdad) along with Royal Falcon (Amman Queen Alia) and Turkish Airlines (TK, Istanbul Airport) were forced to suspend their flights to Mosul on Tuesday after Iraqi security forces closed the airfield, reportedly on the orders of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. "To begin with they (the authorities) said there was information about a hijacked plane, and then they said it was closed for maintenance purposes, but there are no maintenance works," a senior security source in Mosul told Reuters news agency. The standoff is believed to pertain to a long-standing dispute between Mr Maliki and Mosul's governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi, over Mr Nujaifi's support for protests by Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority against the Shi'ite-led government.