Kurdish PKK fighters adjust a machine gun as they prepare to join others near a position which had been hit by Islamic State car bombs in the Yazidi region of Sinjar, northwest Iraq, March 11, 2015. Photo: Reuters
BAGHDAD,— Clashes between the Iraqi army and Kurdish PKK militia killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded five of the militants on Sunday, the Iraqi military said in a statement.
The clashes took place in the Yazidi area of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq after the PKK fighters were denied passage through an army checkpoint, the statement said, adding that the militants drove a vehicle into one soldier and attacked the checkpoint.
The PKK did not immediately comment.
Security incidents pitting the Iraqi military against armed groups other than Islamic State are rare.
Sinjar, near the border with Syria, was one of the first areas to be recaptured from Islamic State in 2015 during a U.S.-backed campaign to drive the jihadist group out of vast areas they once controlled in Syria and Iraq.
The security situation in the remote mountainous region remains fragile, however, with the presence of a number of different armed groups.
The PKK has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey Kurdistan in southern Turkey but has bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, including near Sinjar.
In 2014, the PKK fighters were deployed in Iraq’s Sinjar region to protect the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority from the brutality of the Islamic State group. Since then, PKK has been instrumental in fighting ISIS and protecting Yazidis in Sinjar.
The PKK also played an active role in liberating Iraq’s Sinjar Yazidi (Shingal) town in November 2015.
Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim paramilitaries who helped defeat Islamic State are also stationed around Sinjar, as are Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces – PKK rivals who serve the authorities that run northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population.
More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
In April 2017, Turkish fighter jets bombed the PKK in Iraq’s Sinjar for the first time. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that airstrikes against Kurdish PKK-affiliated militants in Sinjar was coordinated with Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic party KDP leader Massoud Barzani.
In December 2018 the Turkish fighter jets bombed alleged PKK positions in Iraq’s Sinjar and Makhmour.
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