The Sidkan district, located in the vicinity of the Iraqi province of Erbil, was subjected to Turkish bombardment on Saturday, according to an Iraqi local source. The Iraqi Shafaq News Agency quoted the source as saying that the bombing targeted an area where PKK members are holed up, early this morning, in the Seidkan district of Soran district in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region. The region has been subjected to several Turkish attacks on several occasions, the most recent of which was in late July, when Turkish forces bombed a tourist resort in Dohuk Governorate, located on the border between the Kurdistan region and Turkish territory, killing 9 people, including children, and wounding dozens. At the time, Turkey denied the responsibility of its forces for the attack, and blamed it on the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants on its soil, while the Iraqi authorities announced the opening of an investigation into the incident. The Iraqi source said that Saturday’s attack was carried out by a drone, but the size of the losses has not yet been identified. Fires broke out on Friday evening in the pastures of two villages in the Amadiyah district, north of Dohuk, as a result of the bombing of Turkish military helicopters, the agency added. Last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi condemned the Turkish forces once again a frank and blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, expressing Iraq retains its full right to respond to these attacks and will take all necessary measures to protect its people and hold the aggressor party to bear all the consequences of the ongoing escalation.
In addition to the Turkish forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is targeting sites in the Kurdistan region
Ankara has established military bases in northern Iraq for 25 years, participating in the implementation of military operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Ankara and its Western allies classify as a terrorist organization, and has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, and is based in remote mountainous areas in Iraq. The region is subjected from time to time to bombings carried out by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which are strongly condemned by the Iraqi official authorities and the regional government led by Masrour Barzani. Iran often justifies its artillery and ballistic missile attacks on the region’s lands by tracking terrorist groups and targeting secret Israeli bases. Over the past years, Turkey has been bombing areas in northern Syria under the pretext of tracking down fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces, affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which it accuses of targeting Turkish sites. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently expressed his desire to open the door to dialogue with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after the failure of efforts to bring him down over the past ten years.
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