Two people lost their lives in an airstrike carried out by Turkey in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) on 28 April.
The bodies of the deceased, identified as Ahmet Haydari and Resul Yunusi, were returned to their families on 2 May. There are reports that one more person was injured in the attack, but they remain missing.
According to the Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a violence reduction and human rights organisation in Iraq, the two civilians were gathering plants and beets in the countryside of Erbil’s (Hewlêr) Sîdekan district when they were targeted by airstrikes.
The strike came just days after Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported that leaders in Erbil and Baghdad had agreed to support Turkey’s airstrikes in Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkish Defence Minister Yaşar Güler announced that Iraqi forces will establish a joint operations centre to assist the Turkish military.
Airstrikes in the KRI are nothing new. Two civilians in Shiladze (Şêladizê) district of Iraqi Kurdistan’s northern city of Duhok were killed in Turkish airstrikes in March. Two other civilians were wounded. At the time of that attack, the CPT reported that the Turkish military had already carried out 241 bombings and assaults in the Kurdistan Region since the beginning of the year.
Local Peshmerga Serwer Qadir was killed by another airstrike in the Sîdekan district on 18 April, less than a week after Muhammed Said died after Turkey bombed the Sulaymaniyah region. In total, at least 12 civilians have been killed this year in the KRI by Turkish bombardment.
