A Turkish drone strike killed two women journalists in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Friday, Kurdish officials said, Agence France-Presse reported.
The counterterrorism service in the regional capital of Arbil said the dead were Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters, but officials in the region’s second city, Sulaimaniyah, said they were journalists,
An Iraqi security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that a “drone likely belonging to the Turkish army struck a vehicle carrying journalists” in Sayyid Sadik, east of Sulaimaniyah.
When contacted by AFP, the defense ministry in Ankara said it was “not the Turkish army” that carried out the strike.
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1. "The moment that today’s car was targeted by a Turkish drone in Sulaymaniyah city in the Kurdistan Region."
2. "How the drone targeted the car on the main road."
3. "Due to this incident, two Kurdish women journalists were killed and two others were wounded." pic.twitter.com/96m7mV6XIK— Hana Çômanî (@HanaComani) August 23, 2024
The counterterrorism service in Arbil reported a strike by “a Turkish army drone against a vehicle of fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the Sayyid Sadik district.”
“A PKK official, his driver and a fighter were killed” in the bombing, it added.
But the head of the Sulaimaniyah journalists’ union, Karouan Anwar, told reporters that the two women killed were “known to work in the world of journalism and the media.”
Kamal Hama Ridha, the director of Kurdish media production house Chatr, said he employed the journalists, saying one was a resident of Sulaimaniyah while the other was a Kurd from Turkey.
Gulistan Tara is one of the Kurdish journalists who were tragically killed today in a targeted attack by the Turkish state in Sulaymaniyah.
— Vedat Yeler (@vedatyeler_) August 23, 2024
The strike reportedly killed two journalists, Gülistan Tara, a 40-year-old Kurd from Turkey, and Hero Bahadin, a 27-year-old Iraqi video editor, while injuring a third journalist, Rebin Bakir. All three worked for Chatr Multimedia Production Company, which operates PKK-funded news channels Sterk TV and Aryen TV. The attack occurred as the journalists were working near the village of Goptapa, traveling in an unmarked car along the Sulaymaniyah-Halabja road.
Yeganeh Rezaian, the Committee to Protect Journalist’s (CPJ) interim MENA program coordinator, condemned the attack and urged Turkish authorities to investigate whether the journalists were targeted for their work. Despite inquiries, the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment.
The Kurdish region’s deputy prime minister, Qubad Talabani, described the strike as an “unjustifiable crime” and a “flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.”
“The victims of the drone attack … were two journalists and not members of an armed force and did not represent a threat to the security and stability of any country or the region,” he said.
The PKK, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, has rear-bases in the mountains of northern Iraq.
The Turkish army maintains a network of bases in the region to fight the Kurdish militant group, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States.
Following a visit to Baghdad by Turkish officials, the federal government declared the PKK a “banned organization” in March.
Earlier this month, Turkey agreed to a military cooperation pact with Iraq that will see joint training and command centers to fight the Kurdish militants.