More than 800 Kurdistan Region villages evacuated due to PKK-Turkey clashes

Residents of border regions of the Kurdistan Region evacuate their villages, fleeing from Turkish airstrikes. (Photo: Archive)
Residents of border regions of the Kurdistan Region evacuate their villages, fleeing from Turkish airstrikes. (Photo: Archive)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Coordinator for International Advocacy announced on Wednesday that residents of more than 800 villages in mountainous border regions have fled their homes as a result of armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Turkish armed forces.

"These attacks and confrontations caused the mass displacement of the residents of those areas in the region, and also caused their ongoing instability,” said the official, Dindar Zebari. 

Between January and August 2021, he added, 165 airstrikes were carried out, 274 artillery shells were fired, and six ground attacks were launched, noting that the bombing targeted Penjwen, Chwarta, and Hawara-Kon in Sulaimani province.

"Sinjar, Askaplan, Shelani, Kalka Nasara, Kalka Islam, Kashani, Haruri, Kurzar, Dashish, Sikir, and several other areas in Duhok province,” were also affected, according to Zebari.

The PKK has been locked in a decades-long conflict against Ankara over Kurdish rights in Turkey that has led to tens of thousands of deaths on both sides.

The group is headquartered in the Kurdistan Region's Qandil Mountains, mostly in rural areas along the Turkish and Iranian borders.

Officials from both Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have repeatedly called on Turkey and the PKK to take their fight away from areas populated by civilians, thousands of whom have been displaced or sustained damage to their farms, livestock, or homes. Others have suffered serious injury or even death as a result of skirmishes or Turkish bombardment of suspected PKK positions.

Read More: Turkish attack against PKK in Kurdistan's Duhok causes damage, panic among villagers

Zebari added that villages near the Sidekan area in Erbil province were faced airstrikes and artillery shells, with villages near the “Bativa and Kani Masi subdistricts in Duhok province being bombed in early September.

Zebari explained that "these attacks endanger the lives of the citizens of the Kurdistan Region, damage farmers' lands and properties, destroy buildings and homes, and damage natural forests," adding that "more than 800 villages were evacuated as a result of the fighting and clashes between the PKK and the Turkish army."