A drone attack on a small airport eliminates three members of an elite Iraqi Kurdish counterterrorism task force operating in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan, northern Iraq.
Additionally, the attack inflicted injuries on three task force members associated with the airport, located approximately 17 miles southeast of Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan’s second largest city.
The Kurdish militants seeking shelter in Iraq’s Kurdistan region have become targets of both Turkey and, more recently, Iran.
Formerly used primarily for spraying pesticides, the airport has been repurposed to include training facilities for Kurdish counterterrorism forces.
While the elite forces had focused mainly on combatting Islamic State fighters in previous years, other Islamic militant groups now exploit Iraq’s porous borders with Iran and Turkey.
Early Tuesday, the Iraqi government accused Turkey of launching the drone and demanded a cessation of such attacks.
Maj. Gen. Yahya Rasoul Abdullah, military spokesperson for the Prime Minister, stated, “This aggression violates Iraq’s sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity. These repeated attacks strain the principle of harmonious relations between nations and undermine Iraq’s efforts to establish balanced political, economic, and security ties with its neighbors.”
Kurdish leaders, regularly targeted by Turkey, expressed their outrage.
Bafel Talabani, president of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and a prominent figure in Sulaymaniyah, one of Kurdistan’s main political parties, declared, “This criminal act blatantly violates the Kurdistan Region and Iraq’s borders, forming part of a conspiracy to disrupt the region’s peace and stability.”
Turkey has consistently deployed drone attacks to target the insurgent Turkish-Kurdish group, the P.K.K., regularly launching airstrikes within Iraqi Kurdistan.
A similar drone attack occurred near Sulaymaniyah’s international airport in April, resulting in no casualties. Turkey denied responsibility for that incident.
Lt. Gen. Jabbar Yawar, the former Peshmerga minister of the Kurdistan region’s military force, noted the consistent pattern of Turkey’s attacks.
In an interview, he expressed, “We record daily infringements by Turkey on our borders, and we are uncertain about when these attacks will cease and when the central government will intervene to end these incursions. Security officials have documented over 200 instances in 2023 alone, where Turkey has attempted or successfully violated Iraqi territory.”
The International Crisis Group has observed a surge in attacks by Turkey on P.K.K. militants inside Iraq between 2018 and 2022, with the number surpassing 300 in 2022.
Turkey has long engaged in conflict with the P.K.K., which initiated a violent insurgency within Turkey before relocating most of its fighters to Iraq and launching attacks from there. The P.K.K. is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
Reporting from Baghdad: Alissa J. Rubin. Additional reporting from Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, by Kamil Kakol, and from Baghdad by Falih Hassan.
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