WATCH: Hundreds protest in Kurdistan’s Sheladize after recent Turkish bombardment
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Hundreds of people in the Kurdistan Region’s Sheladize region on Saturday protested Turkey’s ongoing bombardment of their villages after a recent Turkish bombing left at least four civilians dead.
Demonstrators in Sheladize, located in the Duhok province’s Amedi region, took to the streets, holding up different signs and shouting slogans calling on the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) to take their fight elsewhere.
Protests quickly turned violent with some people burning Turkish military vehicles at a base in Duhok. Local security forces came to the scene and controlled the violence.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) later released a statement expressing its concerns about the protest in Sheladize that turned violent and resulted in human casualties.
The KRG said security would investigate and punish those responsible for turning the demonstrations violent.
On Wednesday, Turkish warplanes heavily bombarded the Kurdistan Region’s Amedi border areas, killing four civilians. Two other people are believed to be missing.
The Turkish shelling was meant to target PKK fighters in the region, a group that has been fighting a decades-long insurgency with Ankara over Kurdish rights and self-rule.
The PKK is thought to have fighters near hundreds of villages inside the Kurdistan Region, mainly in the mountainous areas near the Turkish border.
Protestors on Saturday urged both Turkey and the PKK to stop using villages as their battleground. Hundreds of villages along the Turkish-Kurdistan border have been evacuated due to the ongoing violence.
The KRG has repeatedly called on the PKK to stop using the region as a launchpad for its attacks.
As part of the conflict, the Turkish army has crossed its southern border several times in the past year, in some places, up 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) deep into the Kurdistan Region.
