Shafaq News- Erbil

Kurdistan Region (KRI) Interior Minister Reber Ahmed on Saturday called on the Iraqi government to implement the Sinjar Agreement, which Baghdad and Erbil signed on Oct. 9, 2020, to establish arrangements for the district's administration, security and reconstruction.

Ahmed spoke at a ceremony marking the return of residents to the Nineveh villages of Mahmudiya, Saudiya, Qahira and Jadriya, which they fled in 2014 when ISIS overran the area. He called their return an important step toward stability and peaceful coexistence.

"The Kurdistan Region received about one million displaced people during the crises the area went through, most of them from Nineveh province," he said, adding that hosting them showed the depth of social ties between Kurds, Arabs and the KRI’s other communities.

In Sinjar, however, many residents, most of them Yazidis, still live in camps or away from home years after the district was retaken from ISIS, the minister said, blaming persistent security and administrative problems, delayed reconstruction and a lack of basic services.

Ahmed urged Baghdad to work with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on practical steps to implement the agreement.

Read more: The long shadow of Sinjar: Twelve years after the ISIS genocide