ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Kirkuk Governor Rebwar Taha said on Sunday that the Iraqi army will “completely” withdraw from the city’s disputed Newroz neighborhood, after the forces deployed in the area for hours in an attempt to seize Kurdish homes.

“The army will leave. That’s it. The army will not remain in the area. We have decided with the army’s chief of staff over the phone that the army will not remain here,” Taha told reporters.

A large number of Iraqi army troops and vehicles were deployed to Kirkuk’s disputed Newroz neighborhood in the early hours of Sunday, seeking to forcibly expel several Kurdish families from their homes.

The forces entered the neighborhood a day earlier, telling the residents of at least five houses that they had 24 hours to vacate the properties, claiming the neighborhood is the official property of the defense ministry.

Taha said that the properties do not belong to anyone and have now been handed over to the governor’s office.

“Some officers were eyeing a house here and expelled a family that had moved in two or three days ago. Today we came and returned the people to their homes and put the rest of the houses under the administration of Kirkuk governor’s office. We will deal with it,” Taha asserted.  

“These lands are not owned. They belong to the state,” he added.

This is not the first time the Iraqi army has aimed to seize properties in Newroz. In early 2024, a similar force was stationed in the Kurdish-majority neighborhood for several weeks, during which they seized multiple Kurdish homes and ordered the families to vacate.

Similar attempts have been made against Kurdish properties in Kirkuk since October 2017.

The land restitution law, ratified by the Iraqi presidency in February 2025, seeks to address property disputes stemming from resolutions enacted during the Baath regime’s Revolutionary Command Council era. The regime transferred the ownership of hundreds of Kurdish and Turkmen properties in Kirkuk to the defense ministry and the municipality starting from the 1970s.