BAGHDAD (Dispatches) -- Iraqi officials have reacted with anger after Turkish airstrikes hit Kurdish refugee camps in the north of the country, alongside targets allegedly linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Tuesday evening’s strikes hit targets in the provinces of Sinjar and Makhmour, as well as a number of areas in northeastern Syria.
A health official in Makhmour told Rudaw that eight people had been killed and 17 others wounded in the attack on the region, among them civilians and PKK fighters. An official statement from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said the strikes had caused “human and material losses”, but did not give details.
The airstrikes in Makhmour targeted a refugee camp established in the 90s that houses over 12,000 people, mainly Kurds from Turkey.
The PKK and Turkey have fought a guerilla war since 1984, which has seen at least 45,000 people killed. The PKK and its affiliates have bases across northern Iraq and Syria, which has inspired Turkey to launch repeated incursions across its southern border.
Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Wednesday that “many terrorists” had been killed in the operation, which he said targeted shelters, tunnels, caves, ammunition depots, bases and training camps linked to the PKK.
“The terrorists have once again felt the breath of the Turkish Armed Forces on their necks,” he said.
Iraqi officials have repeatedly expressed their anger at Turkey’s operations within their borders. In a statement on Twitter, Iraq’s Security Media Cell called on Turkey to “adhere to good neighborliness” and stop the attacks on Iraqi territory.
The statement added that Iraq
 was “fully prepared for cooperation between the two countries and to control the security situation on the common borders”.
Turkey has illegally established a number of bases in northern Iraq in recent years, particularly in the mountainous regions of Erbil and Duhok in the north of the Kurdish region, principally with the alleged intention of combating the PKK.
Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq armed movement in Iraq, warned that if Turkey did not hold off from further incursions, they would “teach the Turkish occupation tough lessons and force them out of the pure land of Iraq”.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the aggression against our people, the bombardment of a refugee camp and increasing the suffering of displaced persons. We affirm that the barbaric Turkish moves will not go unanswered, and will be dealt with when the time is ripe. We will force them to withdraw from the Iraqi soil, as we did with respect to American occupation troops,” he added.
Turkey has struck the UN-supported Makhmour refugee camp a number of times before, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan branding the settlement as an “incubation centre for terrorism”.