Turkey-PKK clashes in Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province wounds 13-year-old girl

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A 13-year-old girl was injured due to clashes on Tuesday between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish army in a village in Duhok province in the Kurdistan Region.

“Armed clashes erupted this evening between the PKK and the Turkish army in the village of Beduhe in Kani Masi sub-district, as the PKK militants targeted a Turkish army military base,” Sarbast Akreye, head of the Kani Masi sub-district, told Kurdistan 24.

Akreye explained that a 13-year-old girl named “Dalia Ibrahim” was seriously wounded after the Turkish army opened rapid fire on the village of Beduhe, north of the Kani Masi sub-district, adding that the girl was transferred to the Duhok emergency hospital.

In the past decade, Turkey has regularly shelled areas inside the Kurdistan Region. Since last year, Turkey’s military operations have intensified in frequency, and they have widened in terms of the territory that is affected. In some areas, Turkish forces have moved as far as 30 kilometers deep across the border and inside the territory of the autonomous region.

On May 21, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), in the last five months, 77 percent of armed clashes and military operations involving Turkey and the PKK have taken place inside the Kurdistan Region, in northern Iraq, while only 23 percent of such incidents have occurred inside Turkey.

On Monday, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced that security forces had “neutralized” what he said were 1,458 PKK “terrorists” in northern Iraq and Syria, since the beginning of 2020.

Read More: Turkey: Over 1,400 militants “neutralized” in North of Iraq and Syria in 2020

The term “neutralize” is commonly used by Turkish officials to refer to enemy fighters killed, captured, or incapacitated.

Skirmishes and attacks between Turkish forces and the PKK often damage property belonging to farmers and residents of border villages in both the Kurdistan Region and Turkey.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has repeatedly told Ankara to cease airstrikes within the Kurdistan Region and has been critical of the PKK for using its territory as a base from which to conduct operations within Turkey.

The PKK took up arms in the 1980s over rights for Kurdish citizens in a conflict that has claimed some 40,000 lives on both sides. Violence has escalated since the collapse of a peace process between Ankara and the PKK in the summer of 2015.

The group is listed as a terrorist organization by several states and organizations, including NATO, the US, the UK, and the European Union. The United Nations and many other major powers have not done so.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany