(Souleimaniyah) At least six people, including three civilians, were killed on Saturday in Iraq by drone strikes attributed to Turkey and targeting Turkish Kurdish rebels in two separate regions, local officials said interviewed by AFP.
Posted at 10:35 a.m.
Turkish raids against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are recurrent in northern Iraq, particularly in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, where the PKK has bases and training camps.
The Turkish army and the authorities in Ankara did not communicate immediately on possible drone strikes in this area.
The first strikes this morning targeted a mountainous area in Chamchamal district, west of the major city of Suleimaniyah, two local officials told AFP.
“Turkish drones hit mountainous areas twice. The second strike against a pick-up killed five people, including two civilians”, assured Heimin Bahjat, director of the municipality of Agjalar.
“Two bodies belonging to residents of Chamchamal have been brought to the city hospital,” an official from the forensic department said on condition of anonymity.
Also speaking on condition of anonymity, a PKK spokesman reported the deaths of “three guerrilla fighters” and “two civilians”.
According to him, the three fighters were “targeted by Turkish armed drones and seriously injured. The two civilians then intervened to help them and were also targeted by a second strike, according to the same source.
Later in the afternoon, a drone strike attributed to Turkey targeted a vehicle in a Turkish Kurdish refugee camp in the Makhmour region, killing one person, “a resident of the camp”, its director told Nchirvan Mahmoud.
Turkey, which has de facto set up dozens of military bases for 25 years in Iraqi Kurdistan, launched a new military operation against the PKK in northern Iraq in mid-April.
These military campaigns with recurrent aerial bombardments and sometimes ground operations complicate relations between the Iraqi central government and Ankara, one of Iraq’s first trading partners.
Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, also has a complicated relationship with the PKK, as its presence in the region hampers its vital trade relations with neighboring Turkey.
In December, three Turkish soldiers were killed in an attack in northern Iraq blamed by Ankara on the PKK.
In August, at least three people died in a Turkish-led airstrike in northwestern Iraq against a clinic where an injured PKK official was being treated.