SULAIMANIYAH: A drone strike in northern Iraq killed four “fighters” from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), officials in the autonomous Kurdistan region stated, accusing the Turkish military.
On Friday, in Iraqi Kurdistan’s second city Sulaimaniyah, a drone attack by Turkiye killed four members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), according to Kurdish authorities in neighbouring Syria.
The PKK is classified as a “terrorist” organisation by Ankara and its Western backers. Turkiye also regards the SDF’s major component, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as a “terrorist” offshoot of the PKK.
The Turkish army rarely remarks on its operations in Iraq, but it routinely hits PKK rear positions in the Kurdistan region’s mountains.
According to a statement from Iraqi Kurdistan’s anti-terrorism services, “four PKK fighters were killed and another wounded when a Turkish army drone targeted their vehicle near the village of Rangina” north of Sulaimaniyah on Friday about 8:00 p.m. (1700 GMT).
The PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkiye since 1984, claiming tens of thousands of lives, and Ankara has long maintained military bases in northern Iraq from which it regularly launches operations against them.
Six Yazidi fighters connected with the PKK were killed in two operations a week apart in May in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Sinjar province, which local security sources blamed on Ankara.
In late February and early March, strikes reported to Turkiye killed fighters from the Sinjar Resistance Units once more. Following the militants’ slaughter of thousands of Yazidi men and kidnapping of thousands of women for exploitation as sex slaves, the movement took up arms against the Daesh group in 2014.
The Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan regional administration have both been accused of supporting Turkiye’s military activity in order to maintain their strong economic relations.
On Tuesday, the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani mentioned a “upcoming visit” by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, although no exact date was given.
The gathering would almost certainly centre on economic activity as well as the sensitive issue of water.
According to Baghdad, Turkiye’s upstream dams on important rivers it shares with drought-stricken Iraq have led to acute water shortages in recent years.