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Iraq's Kurdistan rejects Amnesty report on mass destruction of villages
[Iran Press TV] The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has strongly rejected a new report by the Amnesia Amnesty International that Iraq's Kurdish Peshmerga forces have intentionally razed thousands of Arab houses in areas under their control in the country's north.

"When Peshmerga forces attacked Daesh [Islamic State]-held Arab villages to liberate them, the residents of those villages, along with Daesh [Islamic State] terrorists, confronted Peshmerga fighters and fought back," said the head of the KRG Committee to Respond to International Reports, the Arabic-language al-Maalomah online newspaper reported. He added that a number of villagers and Peshmerga fighters were killed in the festivities, and some houses were also destroyed.

Dindar Zebari also said that the Arclight airstrikes carried out by the so-called US-led coalition and booby-traps planted by the Daesh [Islamic State] Takfiri
...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who must be killed...
 terrorist group in the villages account for most of the casualties and damage in the residential areas.

In a Tuesday report, the UK-based Amnesia Amnesty International said that the KRG with its Peshmerga fighters has intentionally "bulldozed, blown up and burned down" thousands of houses belonging to Arab communities in northern Iraq in an attempt to "uproot" their existence in Kurdish-held territories.

The report further said that KRG forces also barred "tens of thousands" of Arab civilians, who had fled from Daesh [Islamic State], from returning to recaptured areas, adding that forced displacement and deliberate destruction of property without justification, which occurred during the last two years, "may amount to war crimes."

Posted by: Fred 2016-01-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=442707