Three fighters from a Yazidi movement linked to the Turkish PKK in northern Iraq were killed and three others injured in a drone attack by the Turkish army on Tuesday, the anti-terrorist services of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq said.
At 5 a.m. (2 a.m. GMT) on Tuesday, “a Turkish army drone targeted a headquarters of fighters of the ‘Sinjar resistance units’,” the anti-terrorist services said in a press release referring to this Sinjar-based movement of the Yazidi region and allied with the Turkish-Kurdish fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“Three militants were killed,” the statement continued. A similar bomb attack a week ago also killed three fighters.
The Turkish army rarely comments on its attacks in Iraq, but regularly conducts military land and air operations against the PKK and its positions in northern Iraq, in autonomous Kurdistan or in the mountainous region of Sinjar.
In late February and then early March, bombings attributed to Turkey also killed fighters from the Sinjar resistance units, a movement that had taken up arms against the jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group at the time of their rise to power in 2014.
The complexity of the fighting, involving a variety of actors in northern Iraq, highlights the fact that the movement is also linked to the former paramilitaries of Hachd al-Khaabi, a pro-Iranian coalition now integrated into regular Iraqi forces is.
Ankara has built dozens of military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan for 25 years to fight against the PKK.
Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, have long been accused of looking the other way to protect the strategic alliance that links them with Turkey, a key trading partner. Even if, with every outbreak of violence, press releases pay lip service condemning a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and the impact on civilians.
Tensions rose on Saturday around the Makhmour camp in northern Iraq, which houses Kurdish refugees from Turkey. The Iraqi army wants to increase security there by erecting a fence to control the entrances and exits to the camp, which Ankara regards as a PKK breeding ground.