Thousands or people fled a northern Iraqi town amid fierce clashes between the army and an armed faction linked to a Kurdish separatist group, the military and local Iraqi Kurdish officials said Monday.
At least 3,000 people left Sinjar and its surrounding areas, the officials said, and headed farther north toward the semi-autonomous Kurdish region to seek asylum. They left when clashes intensified on Monday between the Iraqi army and the Yazidi Resistance Forces (YBS), a group with ties to the Turkish insurgent Kurdistan Worker's Party, or PKK.
