ARBIL: A Turkish drone strike in northern Iraq on Tuesday killed three Yazidi fighters affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an Iraqi Kurdish security official said.

It is the latest deadly strike blamed on Turkiye in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, where the PKK — whose fighters are Turkish Kurds — has rear bases.

The Turkish military maintains dozens of bases in northern Iraq and carries out air strikes and ground operations against the PKK, which is classified as a ‘terrorist’ group by Ankara and its Western allies.

“A Turkish drone strike on Tuesday afternoon targeted a position of the Sinjar Resistance Units in the locality of Khanasor,” the anti-terrorist services of Iraqi Kurdistan region said in a statement, referring to the PKK-linked Yazidi movement.

Since 1984 the PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkiye that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, and for many years the fighting between Turkiye’s armed forces and Kurdish militants has spilled over into Iraq’s mountainous Kurdish north.

On April 16, officials blamed a drone strike carried out by Turkiye for killing at least two people and wounding two others in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

The strikes near the town of Penjwen, close to the Iranian border, targeted a vehicle carrying PKK fighters, one official said at the time.

On April 7, drone strikes also blamed on Turkiye targeted the surroundings of Sulaimaniyah airport, when the commander of the Kurdish-led and US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were present, as well as US troops.

A source at the Turkish defence ministry denied any involvement by the country’s military.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2023