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Iraq's Sinjar heats up again as PMU closes in

The world's attention has turned back to Iraq's Sinjar as Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units approach during operation to liberate Mosul and Yazidi loyalties worry Turkey.
SINJAR, IRAQ - NOVEMBER 16:  A Kurdish Peshmerga soldier searches for weapons in the rubble of an airstrike near a mosque on November 16, 2015 in Sinjar, Iraq. Kurdish forces, with the aid of months of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, liberated the town from ISIL extremists, known in Arabic as Daesh, in recent days. Although the battle was deemed a major victory, much of the city lay in complete ruins.  (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Attention has once again focused on Sinjar, the strategically significant and Yazidi-dominated area in northwestern Iraq that has long been a tinderbox of ethnic, sectarian and regional rivalries. The United States has been quietly and thus far unsuccessfully working to calm it.

The Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are closing in on the area as they clear the Iraqi-Syrian border of Islamic State fighters, part of the ongoing operation to liberate Mosul. 

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