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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Iraqi flag was officially raised in Shingal – at the municipality building -- on Monday, following a request by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Abadi claimed on Saturday that the Iraqi army also had participated in the Kurdish-led liberation of Shingal, and that the Iraqi national flag should be raised above the city reclaimed from the Islamic State (ISIS) on Friday.
"The Iraqi army through air raids and the cleaning of mines and improvised explosives planted in Shingal did its part, therefore the Iraqi flag must be raised in Shingal," Abadi wrote on his Facebook page Saturday night.
His comments followed a victory speech by Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani in Shingal on Friday, in which he vowed that aside from the Kurdish, “no other flag will rise in Shingal.”
Barzani declared the town liberated from ISIS and congratulated Yezidi Kurds on the victory.
“Shingal is liberated by the Peshmerga. I congratulate the people of Kurdistan, especially the Yezidis,” Barzani said in his speech.
Shingal, the heartland of the Yezidi religious minority, was overrun by ISIS in August 2014. The militants’ subsequent campaign of rape, execution, sexual slavery and kidnapping has raised international allegations of genocide against the Islamist extremist group.
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