Yazidis burn Muslim homes in Sinjar

Smoke believed to be from an airstrike billows over the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015. Kurdish Iraqi fighters, backed by the U.S.-led air campaign, launched an assault Thursday aiming to retake the strategic town of Sinjar, which the Islamic State overran last year in an onslaught that caused the flight of tens of thousands of Yazidis and first prompted the U.S. to launch airstrikes against the militants. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)

Members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, which was attacked by ISIL, looted and burned Muslim homes in Sinjar after its recapture, witnesses said Sunday.
ISIL recaptured the northern town last faith it considers heretical — in a campaign of massacres, enslavement and rape that the United Nations has described as a possible genocide.
Sinjar was recaptured from ISIL on Friday in a major operation led by forces from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region and backed by US-led air strikes.
“Muslim houses were looted and burned,” especially those that had “Sunni” written on them after IS seized the town, said one witness, who declined to be named.
An AFP journalist saw houses in Sinjar that had been marked “Sunni”, possibly as a means for IS to identify which homes should be protected.
“I saw one of the mosques burned at the hands of Yazidis,” the witness said.
A second witness, who also asked not to be identified by name, also reported seeing Yazidis looting Muslim homes and setting them alight.
Kurdish security commanders denied that burning and looting was taking place, and accounts of the unrest could not be independently confirmed.
Rights group Amnesty International documented attacks by Yazidi militiamen against two Sunni Arab villages north of Sinjar in January, in which 21 people were killed and numerous houses burned.
Looting and burning has followed the recapture of other areas in Iraq from ISIL, sparking resentment among residents and posing a threat to long-term stability.

Source: World Bulletin

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