A car exploded in Sinjar (Shengal) in northern Iraq late on Tuesday, leading to four casualties in what has been reported as either a suicide bomb attack or a Turkish drone strike.
Local media organisation Roj News reported that the blast came from a car bomb targeting fighters from the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ), the local security forces in the region.
According to the Roj News report, the vehicle entered Sinjar through an Iraqi Army checkpoint, then local YBŞ security forces tracked it and stopped it for a check. When the security personnel approached, explosives on the vehicle were detonated.
Two YBŞ members and two civilians injured in the blast were transported to hospitals in Sinjar and Mosul, Roj News said.
The YBŞ had not commented on the incident as of Wednesday afternoon, but the Kurdistan Counterterrorism Directorate, based in the regional capital Erbil, announced on social media that the explosion was caused by Turkish drones targeting a YBŞ vehicle and had killed two people and injured two others.
Turkey frequently utilises armed drones in Iraqi Kurdistan to target what it says are members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an organisation Ankara designates as terrorists.
Another drone attack was reported in Sulaymaniyah’s Khurmal subdistrict late on Tuesday, according to a Roj News report. In this case, it was an Iranian drone targeting the base of an exiled Kurdish opposition group, but no casualties were reported.
Since late September, Iran has launched airstrikes against Kurdish exile groups in northern Iraq several times.
The Iranian government says the groups are fuelling anti-government demonstrations which were sparked following the death of Kurdish woman Jîna (Mahsa) Amini, whose death is widely blamed on Iran’s morality police.
