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10-04-2023
BAGHDAD: The Iraqi government has called on Turkey to apologise for an attack on an airport in the country’s northern Kurdish region, while a US official confirmed was an attack on a convoy with US military personnel in the area but said there were no casualties.
The Iraqi demand on Saturday came as a Turkish Defence Ministry official told the Reuters news agency that no Turkish Armed Forces operation had taken place in that region in recent days.
Iraq’s presidency said the attack on Friday took place in the vicinity of the Sulaimaniyah airport in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, denouncing it as a “flagrant aggression” against its sovereignty.
It said Ankara had no legal justification to continue “intimidating civilians under the pretext that forces hostile to it are present on Iraqi soil”.
“In this regard, we call on the Turkish government to take responsibility and present an official apology,” it said.
Turkey, which has spent decades fighting Kurdish armed groups in its east, has conducted several military operations including air raids in northern Iraq and northern Syria against Kurdish-led forces there.
Ankara views the Kurdish-led forces as “terrorists” allied with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is backed by the United States, said in a statement on Saturday that its leader, Mazloum Abdi, was at the Sulaimaniyah airport at the time of the attack but “no harm was done”.
Abdi condemned the attack on Saturday, telling the Kurdish North Press Agency that at the time of the shelling, he was in the convoy that included troops from the US-led coalition and members of the Iraqi Kurdish anti-terrorism force.
Asked about the reason behind the attack, Abdi said, “It is a clear message from the Turks that they are bothered and oppose our international relations and they want to damage them.” (Int’l News Desk)
