ERBIL, Kurdistan Region--The two Kurdish football clubs playing in the Iraqi Premier League have withdrawn from the league after Iraqi fans called one of the clubs ‘ISIS,’ a spokesperson for the Erbil Football Club told Rudaw.
Erbil and Zakho are the only two Kurdish teams in the Iraqi Premier League.
Erbil played an away match against Najaf, south of Baghdad, on Friday, losing one-nil.
The Najaf fans called Kurds and the Kurdish Peshmerga “ISIS” during the match, Rebin Ramzi, the communication officer at Erbil Club told Rudaw.
He said the fans were chanting "Peshmerga is ISIS," and "Erbil is ISIS".
The match stopped for about five minutes in the second half when host fans shouted “Hey, hey, Erbil is ISIS,” Iraqi news outlet Alghad Press reported.
Ramzi said the match stopped because their players could not accept the chants, but that the club told the players to continue playing "to save the lives of the players," indicating that it would have endangered the lives of the players if they did otherwise.
The match then continued with an extra time of eight minutes.
Ramzi said the presidents of the two Kurdish clubs met after the match and decided to withdraw from the Iraqi league.
He told Iraqi media that this is not the first time this sort of behavior has targeted the Kurdish clubs. He believes there was no other way for the Kurdish clubs to stop it.
Ramzi said the Najaf club have apologized and that a delegation from the host club will soon visit Erbil to express their apologies in person.
The two Kurdish clubs are the only ones from the Kurdistan Region who qualified to play in the Iraqi Premier League. Erbil and Zakho are ranked 12th and 16th, respectively.
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