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Yazidis in Iraq's Sinjar brace for possible Turkish attack

The Yazidi community, which only recently faced Islamic State attacks, is now getting ready for a Turkish military operation in Sinjar announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Members of the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a militia affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), disarm an improvised explosive device placed by Islamic State fighters near the village of Umm al-Dhiban, northern Iraq, April 30, 2016. They share little more than an enemy and struggle to communicate on the battlefield, but together two relatively obscure groups have opened up a new front against Islamic State militants in a remote corner of Iraq. The unlikely alliance between the Sinjar Resistance
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KHANASOOR, Iraq — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said March 25 that Turkey had begun operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Sinjar region in northern Iraq. “We said we would go into Sinjar. Now operations have begun there. The fight is internal and external,” Erdogan said before a crowd in Turkey's Trabzon province.

Two days prior to Erdogan's statement, PKK fighters began withdrawing from Sinjar in order to avoid the targeting of civilians in the area.

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