HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Turkish fighter jets bombarded the district of Amedi in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region on Sunday for the third consecutive day targeting suspected positions of the PKK.
Turkish warplanes have targeted several villages in Sangasar and Warte districts, about 130 kilometers east of Erbil.
Warte Mayor Muslih Zrar told Rudaw that Turkish fighter jets intensively bombed Bokriskiyan village on Sunday, adding that fortunately it did not result in the loss of lives or material.
Turkish warplanes had previously shelled a community in the district of Amedi in the Kurdistan Region on Saturday, wounding one person.
Another person was also wounded on Friday after military artillery bombarded the Kurazhari Mountains in Shiladze sub-district four times around 11 a.m.
The two districts are close to areas in Qandil Mountains under the control of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been engaged in a three-decade-long war against the Turkish state.
Turkish fighter jets also on Friday bombed the Amedi area, injuring a 35-year-old woman in the aerial attacks.
The injured woman’s husband claimed that the Turkish army knows the locations of the PKK positions, but still targeted areas where civilians were.
The PKK has some 5,000 guerrilla fighters stationed mostly in the remote bordering areas of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
Since July 2015, Turkey initiated a controversial military campaign against the PKK in the country’s southeastern Kurdish region after Ankara ended a two-year ceasefire agreement. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing Kurdish civilians from fleeing regions where the military operations are being conducted.
In March 2017, the Turkish security forces accused by UN of committing serious abuses during operations against Kurdish militants in the nation’s southeast.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the resulting conflict since then.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Source: eKurd.com