Iraq’s President Abdel Latif Rashid on Tuesday, September 19, expressed strong disapproval of “repeated Turkish assaults,” which came a day after a drone strike on a northern airfield claimed the lives of three Kurdish counterterrorism officers.
Iraq’s President Abdel Latif Rashid condemned on Tuesday “repeated Turkish attacks”, a day after a drone strike on a northern airfield killed three Kurdish counterterrorism officers.
Turkish authorities have not commented on Monday’s strike which killed three members of the counterterrorism forces of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region and wounded three others at Arbat airfield, southeast of the city of Sulaimaniyah.
While such attacks against the Iraqi Kurdish security services are extremely rare, Ankara is leading a quickening campaign in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria, targeting Kurdish fighters.
A senior military official in Baghdad said that the drone which killed the counterterrorism officers had originated in Turkey.
Ankara and its Western allies classify the PKK as a “terrorist” organization.
The UN mission in Iraq condemned the attack on Arbat airfield.
The Turkish army rarely comments on its strikes in Iraq but routinely conducts military operations against PKK rear-bases in Kurdistan as well as in Sinjar district.
The PKK has been waging a deadly insurgency against the Turkish state for four decades and the conflict has repeatedly spilled across the border into northern Iraq.
Turkey operates dozens of military posts in northern Iraq initially established under an agreement struck in the eighties with the government of executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
Khalil Wakim, with AFP
