Yazidis burn Muslim homes in Iraq’s Sinjar

Irbil, Iraq — Members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, which was brutally attacked by the Daesh (the so-called IS) terrorist group, looted and burned Muslim homes in Sinjar after its recapture from the militants, witnesses said Sunday. Daesh overran the northern town last year, targeting Yazidis — whose 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 Daesh 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 Daesh 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 Daesh 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 Daesh, sparking resentment among residents and posing a threat to long-term stability. Meanwhile, Kurdish fighters have uncovered two mass graves outside Sinjar. Qasim Samir, the Iraqi Kurdish director of intelligence in Sinjar, said Sunday that the first grave contained 78 bodies of elderly women. A second grave contained between 50 and 60 bodies of men, women and children.