A Turkish airstrike on Iraqi Kurdistan killed one person and wounded six others on Thursday, a local official said, as Ankara pushed an assault on the north of the country, AFP reported.
On June 17 Turkey launched a cross-border ground and air operation, called “Claw-Tiger,” against Kurdish rebels hiding out in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
It has deployed warplanes, drones and special forces against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist group because of its decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
On Thursday evening a Turkish strike hit a pickup truck in a rural area north of the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, said local official Kameran Abdallah.
“It killed one man who was in the car,” said Abdallah, without being able to specify if the victim was civilian or fighter. “The six wounded consisted of two women, two children and two men, all members of the same family,” he added.
Local sources told the Kurdistan24 news website that 20 villages in Erbil province are in chaos due to the continued bombing, with concerns of displacements if the airstrikes continue, as “the residents hear the buzzing of planes flying over the area continuously throughout the day.”
A total of 115 villages in the border area were previously evacuated.
Since Claw-Tiger began, at least five civilians have been killed and hundreds of families have fled their homes. One PKK fighter and two Turkish soldiers have been killed, according to their respective commands.