4,000 uprooted by fighting in Iraq's Sinjar: Kurdish official

Thousands have been displaced by combat between the Iraqi army and Yazidi fighters affiliated with Turkey's banned separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an official from Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region said Tuesday.

The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking non-Arab, non-Muslim minority who were massacred by Islamic State group jihadists in 2014.

Clashes left one Iraqi soldier dead on Monday in the northern region of Sinjar, the Yazidi minority's heartland which is the site of frequent confrontations between security forces and local fighters allied with the PKK.

The latest violence "led to the displacement of 710 families, or 4,083 people", Hussein Klari, of the Kurdish interior ministry's crisis unit, told a press conference.

They received sanctuary in the Kurdistan region's Dohuk province, he said.

In the Iraqi capital Baghdad, an immigration ministry official who handles issues of internal displacement said the situation in Sinjar had "returned to normal".

"These displacements are temporary. The security situation is very good," said the official, Ali Abbas.

The latest fighting began Sunday, with each side blaming the other for starting it.

A senior Iraqi army official said the clashes cost the lives of a dozen Yazidi fighters.

The army is seeking to apply an agreement reached between Baghdad and the Kurdistan region for the withdrawal of Yazidi and PKK fighters.

The Sinjar Resistance Units force -- which is also affiliated with the Hashed al-Shaabi, a pro-Iran ex-paramilitary coalition -- accuses the army of wanting to control the region.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, a Yazidi who had been enslaved by IS, called for international help to resolve the security issues and protect civilians.

The Sinjar region has also been a target of Turkish air strikes on rear bases of the PKK.

Last August, eight people were killed in a Turkish strike on a Sinjar clinic that was treating a PKK member.

Turkey considers the PKK a terrorist organisation.

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