Rudaw.net

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkish armed forces carried out over 800 attacks on the Kurdistan Region and Nineveh province so far in 2024, a conflict monitor told Rudaw on Sunday. Eight civilians were killed in the attacks. 

“Since the beginning of the year until June 2024, the Turkish army has carried out 833 attacks and bombardments on Kurdistan Region’s territory, and eight civilians were killed in the attacks,” Kamaran Osman, a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a human rights organization that monitors Turkey's operations in the Kurdistan Region, told Rudaw. 

The Kurdistan Region’s Duhok and Erbil provinces lead the charts in the number of attacks, with 365 and 356 areas respectively, followed by Sulaimani with 102 and the Yazidi heartland of Shingal in Nineveh province with 10 attacks, Osman said. 

Turkey frequently bombards the northern mountainous areas of the Kurdistan Region under the pretext of targeting Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters nestled in the mountains. 

The PKK is a Kurdish group that has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state for decades in the struggle for greater Kurdish rights and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara. 

Civilians are often caught in the crossfire of the conflict between Turkey and the PKK. Many families have been forced to flee their homes in the Kurdistan Region's villages because of clashes, especially those in northern Duhok province near the border with Turkey, leaving entire villages empty. A Kurdistan Region parliamentary report published in 2020 said that the Turkey-PKK conflict has left over 500 villages empty across the Region.

A total of 1,586 attacks were carried out by Ankara on the Kurdistan Region and Nineveh province in 2023, according to CPT data.