Kurdish group vows to stay in Sinjar despite threat of Turkish attack

Описание: (25 Mar 2018) A spokesman for the Kurdish militant group YBS said on Saturday they were staying in the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq, despite threats from the Turkish government that they will attack if the Kurds do not withdraw.
The YBS (Kurdish acronym for Sinjar Protection Units) is the local affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane), a Kurdish armed group which has led a decades-long insurgency in Turkey.
It is also affiliated with the Popular Mobilisation Forces, a group of mainly Iraqi Shiite militias backing the Baghdad government.
On Saturday, the YBS spokesman said PKK militants had agreed to leave Sinjar, but the YBS, composed of local Yazidi fighters, would stay in the area as it saw itself as a legitimate Iraqi force.
On Friday the PKK had said in a statement it planned to withdraw from Sinjar, following threats of attack from the Turkish government.
In recent weeks Turkey has threatened to attack the area if the Kurds did not withdraw and its jets bombed PKK positions further north, drawing rare condemnation from the Iraqi government.
Ankara has also said it would conduct a joint operation with Iraqi forces in the area, but the Iraqi government has rejected this.
The PKK came to Sinjar in August 2014 after the Islamic State group attacked local Yazidi villages, killing and kidnapping thousands of people, following the flight of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga.

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