For third time in a year, Turkish warplanes targeting PKK strike near village in Kurdistan Region
The Turkish attack sparked “panic” among the rural community of Jamkani, a source familiar with the incident said.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish fighter jets on Saturday launched a series of air raids in the Kurdistan Region in areas along its northern border with Turkey, targeting alleged positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Such bombings of the Qandil Mountains range and the sprawling border areas have been a regular occurrence since the peace process between the PKK and Ankara collapsed nearly five years ago.
The most recent Turkish bombing focused on sites where PKK members are suspected to be holed up in near the village of Jamkani, located in the Amadiya district of Duhok province. The number of casualties was not immediately known.
A source familiar with the incident and who asked to remain anonymous told Kurdistan 24 that the Turkish bombardment took place at eleven o’clock in the morning and sparked “panic” among the rural community of Jamkani, the source added.
This is the third airstrike taking place in a year in the vicinity of the border village, which is surrounded by mountains believed to be the sites of make-shift bases of operation used by PKK fighters.
The PKK is engaged in a decades-long insurgency against Turkey over Kurdish rights and self-rule in a conflict that has resulted in the death of over 40,000 people on both sides.
In recent years, most clashes between the PKK and Ankara or attacks by one on the other has taken place inside the Kurdistan Region. A recent analysis by a US-based watchdog said 77 percent of all these engagements have “taken place in Iraq,” referring mostly to the autonomous Kurdistan Region.
Read More: Most Turkey-PKK engagements in 2020 took place in Kurdistan Region, conflict watchdog reports
Ankara, along with Washington, the EU, and NATO, designates the PKK as a terrorist organization. The group is thought to have fighters near hundreds of villages inside the Kurdistan Region, mainly in the mountainous areas near the Turkish and Iranian borders.
In the past decade, Turkey has regularly bombed and shelled areas inside the Kurdistan Region, but operations this year have intensified and widened in terms of scope and territory covered. In some areas, Turkish forces have mobilized as far as 30 kilometers deep inside the autonomous region’s border.
As civilians, agriculture, trade, and the local environment continue to suffer from the clashes, residents and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) officials have repeatedly asked the PKK and the Turkish government to take their fight elsewhere.
In April, the Iraqi foreign minister summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad and delivered him a memorandum of protest against airstrikes Ankara conducted earlier that month against alleged PKK positions in the Kurdistan Region and a refugee camp in the disputed city of Makhmour.
Read More: Baghdad summons Turkish ambassador over airstrikes within Iraqi airspace
Editing by John J. Catherine