BAGHDAD (Dispatches) — The Iraqi foreign ministry on Saturday it has filed a complaint with the UN Security Council against alleged Turkish shelling of a tourist resort in Iraq’s Kurdistan.
In a press statement, the ministry said it has also called for an emergency Security Council session about the recent attack in Dohuk Province, leaving multiple casualties.
The Iraqi government on Wednesday recalled its charge d’affaires in Ankara for consultation about the attack, decided not to send its ambassador back to Turkiye and summoned the Turkish ambassador in Iraq in protest against the shelling.
Eight people were killed and 23 others wounded in an attack in Dohuk province in Iraq’s Kurdistan region on Wednesday.
Authorities in Iraq insist that the attack was carried out by Turkish forces and that they are responsible for the deaths and injuries of Iraqi civilians, while Ankara says the country’s forces did not attack civilians.
Ministry spokesman Ahmad al-Sahaf said there is “no security and military agreement” with Turkiye at the moment, echoing earlier remarks by a member of the security and defense commission of the Iraqi parliament, who announced that the security agreement between Baghdad and Ankara has come to an end.
In an interview with Iraq’s Arabic news channel Alsumaria on Wednesday night, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said, “If there is a problem between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), this problem should not be dragged into the Iraqi territory.”
“Some Iraqi military experts have proved that this attack was carried out by Turkiye,” he added.
Militants of the PKK — designated
as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union — regularly clash with Turkish forces in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkiye attached to northern Iraq.
In response, the Turkish military has occupied areas in northern Iraq, where it regularly conducts attacks against purported PKK positions without the Arab country’s consent. Baghdad has repeatedly condemned Ankara’s ongoing military operations in northern Iraq.
Iraqi resistance groups have also time and again warned Turkiye of the consequences of its incursions into their country.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has already ordered the formation of an investigative committee, headed by the foreign minister and made up of several high-ranking security officials, to thoroughly look into the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Iraq’s parliament was about to hold an emergency session on Saturday in the presence of the country’s defense and foreign ministers and the army’s chief of staff to discuss the attack.