SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi Joint Operations Command reiterated on Sunday that there were no armed groups in Sinjar, few days after a senior Kurdish official said all groups were still present in the district.
Major General Tahseen al-Khafaji, spokesman of the joint operations command, said Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi had ordered that the district should be “free of armed groups”.
“There are currently no [armed] groups in the district,” Khafaji added, according to Iraqi state news agency INA.
“The district is currently empty of any party or political entity that takes charge of security in the city, with the exception of the security system of the federal government,” he said.
Khafaji further said only Iraqi security forces were present in and outside the district.
On Wednesday, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said the armed groups which were supposed to leave the district under an agreement between Erbil and Baghdad were still present in Sinjar.
“As long as I know, the Sinjar agreement hasn’t been implemented … The parties supposed to leave those areas are still present there,” Barzani said in a press conference.
“The normalization of the situation to allow the return of the displaced people living in camps has not been implemented as well,” Barzani added.
“We are seriously waiting for the agreement to be implemented as it is, but unfortunately it has not yet, even though we lost a lot of time.”
In October, the federal government and the KRG reached an agreement to normalize the governance and security situation in Sinjar.
