Abadi is welcomed by Barzani following his arrival at the airport in Arbil yesterday.

Agencies/Baghdad

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the Baghdad government would work with Kurdish authorities to liberate the northern province of Nineveh from Islamic State militants.
During his first visit to the Kurdistan region since becoming prime minister last year, Abadi said Baghdad and Arbil faced a common enemy and would improve ties to help confront the threat.
“Our visit to Arbil today is to co-ordinate and co-operate on a joint plan to liberate the people of Nineveh,” Abadi said at a joint news conference with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani yesterday.
Abadi declined to lay out a timetable for the plan to retake Nineveh, of which Mosul is capital, in order not to lose the “element of surprise”.
The trip comes less than a week after IS militants were driven out of the city of Tikrit by Iraqi forces including Shia militia, backed by coalition air strikes.
Asked about reported abuses by the Shia militia, who are grouped together as Popular Mobilisation Committees or Hashid Shaabi, Abadi said it was not fair to level the accusation at the entire force.
“There’s a small group that attempts to attach itself to the Hahsid Shaabi and attack civilians and their belongings and offend the Hahsid Shaabi,” Abadi said. “Our measures are to arrest these people and present them to court and we have indeed arrested.”   
He said “only” 152 homes and shops were burned in Tikrit.
Abadi did not specify who burned the structures or when the fires took place, but pro-government militiamen have admitted to torching houses in other recaptured areas and allegedly did so in Tikrit as well.
“Only 67 houses and... around 85 stores were burned, and it is a very small number for a city with a population of 100,000 people,” Abadi told the news conference.
He said those figures were confirmed by top officials including the governor and police chief of Salaheddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital.
Columns of black smoke rose from burning homes and shops even as Abadi visited Tikrit last Wednesday to celebrate its recapture from IS.
During the visit, pro-government militiamen looted and put graffiti on shops in central Tikrit while journalists looked on.
The premier’s office said on Friday he had ordered security forces to “deal with cases of vandalism” in Tikrit, blaming it on “gangs” seeking to tarnish the achievements of government forces and their paramilitary allies.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shia cleric who is revered by millions, urged the forces to “preserve and guard citizens’ properties in areas that have been liberated”.