Mendelî

Mandali (Kurdish: Mendelî, Arabic: مندلي) is a town in Diyala Governorate, eastern Iraq, in the Balad Ruz District. The city has a population of 32,800. The people speak Southern Kurdish and the majority are Shi'as, and there is a sizeable community of Feylis. It is located near the Iranian border. A referendum on whether the area should become part of Iraqi Kurdistan was scheduled to be held in November 2007, but was initially postponed for up to six months and ended up never taking place.

Mandali was continuously a district of Diyala governorate
from 1932 to 1987, at which time it was downgraded
to a subdistrict within the Baladruz district of
Diyala by Republican Decree no. 459 of 1987.

Approximately seventy Kurdish villages were destroyed,
hundreds of civilians were killed, and some 4,000
Kurdish families were deported or fled from Mandali
after the collapse of the Kurdish movement in 1975.

On the front line of the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq war,
Mandali experienced heavy artillery fire which
destroyed many of the town’s buildings. The war catalyzed
a second wave of migration by its population to
the city of Baladruz