The Turkish Armed Forces have launched nearly 1,000 strikes within the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan this year, the Shafaq news website reported on Saturday, citing a rights group.
“During the first six months of 2024, the Turkish military conducted 833 attacks and bombings in KRI, including 365 in Duhok, 356 in Erbil, 102 in al-Sulaymaniyah, and 10 in Nineveh,” Shafaq quoted Kamran Osman, the human rights officer for the Community Peacemakers Teams (CPT), a rights group based in US and Canada, as saying.
“Over the past two days, the Turkish military carried out 27 attacks on several sites in Kurdistan, leading to the death of eight civilians,” Osman said.
Turkey has carried out ground and air operations in northern Iraq against positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long war against the Turkish state.
Turkey’s armed forces rarely comment on their operations in Iraq.
For decades, Turkey has operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies consider a terrorist group.
Both Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government have been accused of tolerating Turkey’s military activities to preserve their close economic ties.
Following high-level talks between Turkish and Iraqi officials in April, Iraq announced the designation of the PKK as a “banned organization.”