MILITIA loyal to Iraq’s Kurdish regional government attacked Yazidi resistance units in Sinjar yesterday morning — allegedly at Turkey’s bidding.

Kurdish news site Kom reported that Syrian-based Rojava Peshmerga militia clashed with the local Yazidi Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) in the Khanesor district of the town west of Mosul.

The Peshmerga claimed the YBS fired on them as they entered Khanesor, but the Yazidis accused them of trying to push them out of the city. One YBS member was reportedly killed and seven on both sides were injured in the hour-long battle. The YBS claimed to have aken four Peshmerga gunmen prisoner.

The “Roj-Pesh” is affiliated to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, whose leader Masoud Barzani is president of Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government, while the YBS is allied to the rival Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

On Thursday some 500 RojPesh gunmen arrived at the nearby Iraqi-Syrian border in what spokesman Sharvan Derki insisted was just a normal troop rotation and not in preparation for operations inside Syria. Kurdish political parties across the region urged a halt to the fighting.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said: “We call for the immediate cessation of all hostilities between Kurds in Sinjar. Fighting only serves our enemies not Kurdistan.”

Turkey’s Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) spokesman Osman Baydemir said: “Our call is to all Kurds and Kurdistan’s leaders who said: ‘A fight between siblings will never happen again.’ We are calling on them to remain true to their words.”

But journalist Kamal Chomani, co-founder of the Kurdish Policy Foundation, accused Turkey of inciting Mr Barzani to attack the YBS when he visited President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara last weekend.

“The main purpose of receiving Barzani was to unite fronts against Rojava [northern Syria], YBS in Sinjar and PKK in Qandil” — the mountainous border region between Iraq, Iran and Turkey.

Mr Chomani said Turkey “cannot accept” the Kurdish YPG militia’s offensive to capture the Syrian Isis stronghold of Raqqa in parallel with the Iraqi army’s liberation of Mosul. “It wants to create obstacles for the next phases of the liberation of these two cities as defeating Isis does not serve Turkish interests,” he said.

Sinjar’s capture by Isis in 2014 was followed by atrocities against the Yazidi ethno-religious minority.

The town was liberated by a joint PKK and Roj-Pesh offensive in November 2015.