BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – Turkish warplanes have heavily bombarded villages near the northern Iraqi city of Duhok, witnesses say.
Eyewitnesses told Shafaq News Agency that 14 air-to-ground missiles landed on Saturday near Huror in Berwari Bala of the Kani Masi sub-district.
“The Turkish bombardment has caused grave damages to the farms and nearby forests,” they said.
The district is located north of the city of Duhok, which is the capital of a province of the same name in the Kurdish-populated region.
Turkey specifies the target of the operations as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The militant group has been engaged in a 1984-present conflict against Ankara, which it has been waging with the aim of carving out a separatist state in southeastern Turkey.
A shaky ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015. Attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.
More than 40,000 people have been killed during the three-decade-long conflict.
The Saturday operation came less than a week after a number of rockets targeted a military base in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh, where Turkish military forces are engaged in operations against PKK’s positions.
The Iraqi government has on many occasions denounced the Turkish incursions as a violation of its territorial integrity.