Turkey Censured Over Air Raid in Northern Iraq

Date: 26 April 2017 - 20:19

News ID: ۳۸۸۱۴

BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – The Iraqi government has condemned a deadly air raid by Turkish warplanes in northern Iraq, which killed at least six Peshmerga Kurdish fighters.
Government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi, in a statement, slammed Ankara for violating Iraq’s sovereignty.
"The Iraqi government condemns and rejects the strikes carried out by Turkish aircraft on Iraqi territory," the statement read.
Regional authorities in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have already denounced Turkey’s airstrike in Sinjar Mountains area late on Monday, which left five Peshmerga soldiers and one police officer dead.
The Turkish army earlier said it had conducted a strike against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in an alleged bid to prevent the Kurdish forces from sending weapons to Turkey.
Turkey frequently launches airstrikes in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq without coordination with Baghdad. Ankara has also deployed troops into Iraq, sparking a bitter rift with Baghdad.
Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region also denounced as "unacceptable” Turkey’s airstrike in northern Iraq.
"The death of the Peshmerga is regrettable and the strike on the Peshmerga by Turkish warplanes is unacceptable," the region's armed force, Peshmerga, said in a statement.
Since July 2015, the Turkish air force has been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country’s southeastern border region as well as in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria.
A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants following Turkish strikes against the group.
Turkish officials say the United States and Russia were informed in advance of a recent airstrike carried out on the positions of suspected Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday that the Turkish military had informed Washington and Moscow on the attack a day earlier that targeted Kurdish-dominated areas in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
"Two hours before this operation, we shared information with the U.S. and Russia that we would undertake an operation," Cavusoglu said, adding that Ankara had also told Washington in the "last few weeks" that such military operations would be carried out.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vehemently defended Ankara's recent deadly airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, vowing that Turkey would continue its military operations in both Arab countries "until the last terrorist is eliminated."
The Turkish leader made the remarks in an interview with Reuters in the presidential palace in Ankara, adding that he would not allow Iraq's northwestern Sinjar Mountains area to become a "new Qandil" for the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), referring to a PKK bastion in Iraq, near the borders with Turkey and Iran.
"We are obliged to take measures. We must take steps. We shared this with the U.S. and Russia and we are sharing it with Iraq as well," Erdogan further said.