After Kirkuk, Kurdish forces pull out of more areas in Iraq

Associated Press

KIRKUK, Iraq — Kurdish forces pulled out of disputed areas across northern and eastern Iraq on Tuesday, a day after handing the northern city of Kirkuk over to federal forces amid a tense standoff following last month’s vote for independence.

The Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, withdrew from Sinjar as well as three towns on the border with Iran, allowing Iraqi government forces and statesanctioned militias to assumecontrol.

The vastly outnumbered Kurdish forces appear to have bowed to demands from the central government that they hand over the so-called disputed territories outside the Kurds’ autonomous region, including areas seized from the Islamic State group inrecent years.

Iraqi forces were massed in the north after driving IS from Hawija, one of its last strongholds in the country. The U.S. is closely allied with both the Iraqi military and Kurdish forces, and had urged them to avoid further escalation.

The Kurds had included the disputed areas in a nonbinding referendum last month in which more than 90 percent of voters favored independence. The Iraqi government, as well as Turkey and Iran, which border the land-locked Kurdish region, rejected the vote.

Masloum Shingali, commander of a local Yazidi militia in Sinjar, said the peshmerga left before dawn Tuesday, allowing the state-sanctioned militias, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, tomove in.

IS massacred Yazidis after seizing Sinjar in 2014. More than 2,000 men were killed, and thousands of women and children were taken into slavery. Kurdish forces, supported by U.S. airstrikes, liberatedthe town in 2015.

Mahma Khalil, the mayor, said the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iran-backed coalition of mostly Shiite Arab militias, were securing Sinjar.

The Kurds “left immediately, they didn’t want to fight,” Mr. Shingali said.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said the peshmerga also pulled out of the eastern towns of Jaloula, Khanaqin andMandali.

Meanwhile, thousands of civilians were seen streaming back to Kirkuk, driving along a main highway to the city’s east. The Kurds had long coveted Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic city of some 1 million Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Christians that is in the heart of a major oilproducing region. They assumed control of the city in 2014, as IS militants stormed across northern Iraq and the country’s armed forces disintegrated.