BAGHDAD — Three people were killed Tuesday when a Turkish air raid hit
a clinic in northwest Iraq, a region Ankara regularly targets in operations
against Kurdish separatists, security and medical sources said.
اضافة اعلان
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) — categorized as a terrorist organization
by Ankara — has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkey and maintains
bases in the rugged mountains of neighboring northern Iraq.
Repeated Turkish raids have stoked tensions with Baghdad, but President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that his country will deal with the PKK
presence if Iraq is unable to do so.
Tuesday's raid "totally destroyed" the makeshift clinic in the
village of Sekaina in Sinjar province, the district's deputy mayor Jalal Khalef
Bisso told AFP.
A doctor in Sinjar said at least three people were killed and five others
wounded.
The raid consisted of three drone strikes, another official said.
A senior Iraqi army officer told AFP that the raid was carried out by
Turkey's military.
A Turkish air strike on Monday targeted and killed a senior Yazidi official
of an Iraqi force linked to the PKK in Sinjar, along with two colleagues.
Monday's raid also wounded a PKK official, a member of the Yazidi minority.
He was transferred for treatment to the Sekaina facility that was hit
Tuesday, according to a Yazidi activist contacted by AFP.
The PKK official had
survived.
Images shared online by purported residents showed a basement and clinic
reduced to rubble and black smoke rising into the air.
Turkey has installed around a dozen military bases over the past 25 years in
Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, and it launched a new cross-border offensive
in the spring against the PKK, consisting of both aerial and ground attacks.
Ankara is determined to neutralize the cross-border rear-bases of the PKK,
which has since 1984 led a bloody guerrilla war against Turkey that has seen
more than 40,000 deaths.
Iraq regularly decries violations of its sovereignty, and has repeatedly
summoned the Turkish ambassador over Ankara's cross-border military campaign.
But Iraq, which counts on Turkey as an important commercial partner, has
refrained from taking punitive measures.
The Turkish offensive in Iraqi Kurdistan — particularly aerial bombing — has
prompted hundreds of villagers to flee their homes.
A farmer was killed by Turkish army fire on Friday during a clash with the
PKK.
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