KURDISH forces have pushed back from the Iraqi town of Sinjar after losing their foothold in the city of Kirkuk under pressure from the country's military.
It came as thousands of civilians were seen streaming back to Kirkuk, driving along a main road to the city’s eastern boundaries.
The Kurdish forces had built an earthen barrier along the road, reinforced by armoured vehicles, but were allowing civilians to return to the city.
Many returnees were seen with their children and belongings packed tight in their cars.
The Iraqi forces’ retaking of Kirkuk came only two weeks after they had fought together with the Kurdish fighters to neutralise the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq, their common enemy.
As Kirkuk’s Arab and Turkmen residents on this week celebrated the change of power, thousands of Kurdish residents, fearful of federal and Shiite militia rule, packed the roads north to Irbil, the capital of the northern autonomous Kurdish region.
Yesterday they were going back.
When Iraq’s armed forces crumbled in the face of an advance by IS in 2014, Kurdish forces moved into Kirkuk to secure the city and its surrounding oil wells though it was 20 miles outside the Kurds’ autonomous region in northeast Iraq.
Baghdad has since insisted Kirkuk and its province be returned to the central government, but matters came to a head when the Kurdish authorities expanded their referendum last month to include Kirkuk.
To the Iraqi central government, that looked like Kurdish expansionism.
The city of more than one million is home to Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, as well as Christians and Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
By midday on Monday, federal forces had moved into several major oil fields north of the city, as well as the Kirkuk airport and an important military base, according to Iraqi commanders.
Kurdish party headquarters inside Kirkuk had been abandoned.
In the predominantly Yazidi town of Sinjar, Masloum Shingali, commander of the local Yazidi militia, said Kurdish forces had left before dawn on Tuesday, allowing Iraqi Shiite militiamen to move in.
The Yazidis were massacred by IS group which seized the town in 2014, taking refuge on the craggy mile-high ridge of Mount Sinjar, which according to local legend was the final resting place of Noah’s ark.
They are one of Iraq’s oldest minorities, reputedly found by an 11th century Ummayyad sheikh and descended from the ancient Persian faith of Zoroastrianism, along with Christianity and Islam.
Before the massacre, there were an estimated 700,000 Yazidi people, with the vast majority of them concentrated in in and around Sinjar.
More than 2,000 were killed, and thousands of women and children were taken into slavery.
Kurdish forces, supported by US air strikes, liberated the town in 2015.
Town mayor Mahma Khalil said the Iranian-supported Popular Mobilisation militia forces were securing Sinjar.
The militias are recognized by Iraq’s government as a part of its armed forces but are viewed with deep suspicion by the country’s Kurdish authorities, which see them as an instrument of Tehran.
The Kurdish forces “left immediately, they didn’t want to fight”, Mr Shingali said.
The Shiite militia had supported Iraqi forces’ to oust Kurdish troops out of Kirkuk.
The Kurdish forces withdrew to their autonomous region in the northeast.
Meanwhile, A hospital in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Suleimaniyah said it has received the bodies of 25 Kurdish fighters killed in clashes a day earlier over the disputed city of Kirkuk.
Dr Omeid Hama Ali, the director of Suleimaniyah Hospital’s emergency department, said the hospital treated 44 other wounded fighters.
Iraqi troops forced their way into Kirkuk on this week seizing several major oil and gas installations nearby.
Kurdish forces withdrew amid scattered clashes.
It was not clear where the Kurdish fighters were killed, or if the Iraqi forces sustained any losses.
Since then, Kurdish forces have been withdrawing from disputed territories across northern and eastern Iraq, including areas they acquired in the tumult of the war on IS.
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