MESOP NEWS SOUTH KURDISTAN-IRAQ: PKK OUT OF SINJAR ! – Yezidi Spiritual Assembly Calls on PKK to Leave Sinjar / The assembly held a meeting in Sinjar on PKK forces’ presence in Sinjar

Basnews English – 04/03/2017 – 15:39 – SINJAR — The Yezidi Spiritual Assembly on Saturday called on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to withdraw its forces from the Yezidi populated areas to their previous locations.

The Yezidi Spiritual Assembly held a meeting on Saturday, March 4, to discuss the issue of the PKK forces in Sinjar district and later released a statement in which they ask the PKK forces to step out from all the Yezidi areas.The assembly stresses that the district of Sinjar and its suburbs are Kurdish and are part of the Kurdistan Region. “We call on PKK forces to leave Sinjar and return to their [previous] areas,” the statement of the assembly added.

Early on Friday, armed confrontations broke out between the Roj Peshmerga forces and Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a PKK-affiliated group, near Sinuni subdistrict of Sinjar in which two YBS fighters were killed with several others injured on both sides.

The incident deeply concerned the Yezidi people in Sinjar who are still suffering from the atrocities they faced at the hands of the Islamic State (IS) militants in August 2014.The PKK guerrillas entered Sinjar in the wake of the IS attack on the district and they have since refused to leave the area despite the frequent calls of the Yezidis and Kurdistan Region officials for their withdrawal. www.mesop.de