PKK-Turkey armed conflict left 6 casualties in Kurdistan last month: MP
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – During armed conflict between Turkish troops and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters over one month on the border areas of the Kurdistan Region, two civilians were killed and four others heavily injured, a Kurdish parliamentarian said on Sunday.
Last week, another citizen was killed when Turkish airstrikes struck border areas of the Kurdistan Region on the first day of Eid al-Fitr celebrations. The death raised the total civilian casualties’ toll to six individuals: two killed, four wounded. Two villages on the border of Zakho district were also evacuated.
Zedan Bradosty, a member of the Kurdistan Region’s Parliament, urged the opposing sides not to use the Kurdistan Region as a “battleground for armed disputes.”
“We support Kurdish rights movement in all four parts of [the Greater] Kurdistan, but within peaceful methods, not military actions,” he was quoted as saying by local media.
Bradosty added that the ongoing conflict and Turkish attacks had left hundreds of villages in rubble.
Civilians in the area also complain about the constant shelling between the PKK and Turkish troops.
Barzan Shex-Omar, a resident in the Mergasur district, told local media that children live in constant fear from sounds of bombardments and gunfire.
“With the constant fear of getting hit by gunfire, we are forced to stay indoors,” Shex-Omar said, adding the ongoing conflict affects their livelihood and source of income, especially during the harvest season.
Turkey, along with the United States and the European Union, considers the PKK a “terrorist” organization.
PKK fighters, now headquartered in the Kurdistan Region’s Qandil Mountains, have been fighting an almost four-decade-long insurgency against Ankara which has resulted in about 40,000 casualties from both sides.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany
