Kurds Raid Turkish Base in Iraq, Torch Tanks

Date: 26 January 2019 - 21:48

News ID: ۶۲۵۲۳

DOHUK, Iraq (Dispatches) -- At least 10 people were wounded when protesters stormed a Turkish military camp near Dohuk in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region on Saturday, burning two tanks and other vehicles, residents and Kurdish officials said.
The crowd was demonstrating over a recent Turkish air raid that killed four civilians, a Kurdish official in the region of Dohuk said.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry wrote on Twitter: "An attack has occurred on one of bases located in northern Iraq as a result of provocation by the PKK terrorist organization. There was partial damage to vehicles and equipment during the attack.”
Without naming the base, the ministry said "necessary precautions are being taken regarding the incident.”
Turkey carries out regular air raids near the border against the PKK insurgent group which has bases in northern Iraq and has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey.
A second Kurdish official, who also did not give his name, said Turkish troops at the camp in Shiladze, east of Dohuk, had initially shot at the protesters and then left the camp.
Kurdish security forces are trying to control the situation, he said.
In 2014, Turkey sent troops to the town of Bashiqa in northern Iraq under the banner of fighting the Daesh terror group without Baghdad’s consent.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan once famously told Iraq’s then prime minister Haider al-Abadi, "You are not on my level” after the latter protested the deployment that brought the two sides close to the brink of war at one point.
Turkey regularly hits PKK bases across its southern border, saying the militants use the mountainous northern Iraqi region as a base for deadly attacks inside Turkey. The PKK has waged an insurgency since the 1980s, which has killed about 40,000 people.