Turkey Violates Air Space in Iraq killing civilians
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Roshan Amiri
- . April 20, 2020
- . Update: April 21, 2020 9:30 am
Two women have been killed by Turkish army forces in a Kurdish refugee camp near the Iraqi city of Mosul by a missile fired by a Turkish drone.The death of the two women have been announced by the Iraqi Security Media Cell following the Turkish planes’ bombing of Makhmur refugee camp southwest of Mosul (400 km north of Baghdad).
“The Turkish bombing is an act of aggression,” said the spokesman for the Iraqi army’s commander, Abdul Karim Khalaf to the Iraqi News Agency (INA).”What was done by a Turkish airliner to violate Iraqi airspace is a unilateral act of aggression, and Ankara will bear its results.”He added.
Khalaf pointed out that “if Turkey has security concerns, then the Iraqi state exists and there must be an agreement between the two countries that would reduce anxiety in the border issue,” stressing that “the Iraqi government will take all measures to counter any action taken towards its territory.”
The Kurdish “Rudaw” site said that Turkish aircraft also bombed the headquarters of the The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) near the town of Makhmur. The Turkish planes bombed the town of Makhmur, following a similar bombing that took place before in the “ZinniWarti” area, for the second time in the past 12 hours, which resulted in the destruction of the new base of the PKK there. The Kurdish website said.
The Turkish Ministry of Defense had announced earlier that it “neutralized 4 terrorists” from the PKK in an air raid on Qandil Mountain in northern Iraq.The ministry said in a statement on Twitter that Turkish forces monitored the movements of 4 terrorists in Qandil. It stated that the Air Force carried out a raid in the area and managed to neutralize the terrorists.
The Makhmur camp, located between the cities of Erbil and Mosul, houses Turkish Kurdish refugees affiliated with the PKK, who took refuge from southeast Turkey to Iraq in the nineties. In recent years, it has become a target point for the Turkish army, which has bombed it more than once. Today it has turned into a focal point of political and security conflict between Turkey and the Iraqi central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq.
Makhmur Refugee Camp was founded in 1998.About 25,000 Kurdish refugees, who fled the civil war between Kurds and the Turkish state in the 1990s, live in this Refugee Camp. Several members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) come from this camp and in it, exists a “Garden of the Martyrs”, where fallen PKK members are remembered. The camp was under the PKK security and political governance since 2014.
“The Air Defense Command monitored a violation of Iraqi airspace by an armed Turkish drone. Two women were killed in a camp for Kurdish Turkish refugee families near the city of Makhmur which was bombed by a missile.” The security media cell said in a s
