Turks bomb Kurdish refugee camp in Iraq

Three civilians were killed on Saturday in a Turkish drone bombing a refugee camp in northern Iraq, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had recently threatened to "clean up", a Kurdish MP said. .

Ankara regularly bombs northern Iraq to dislodge fighters from the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), a Turkish rebel group it considers "terrorist".

Thanks to the withdrawal of American soldiers from this area, the Turks launched a long-term military intervention in October 2019.

Since April 23, a new military campaign, air and sometimes land, against the PKK, is at work.

It could be a planned operation in this context, unless the drone was sent in retaliation for an ambush by the PKK, early this Saturday, which left five dead in the ranks of the peshmerga, the fighters of the Iraqi Kurdistan, Ankara's great ally.

Rachad Galali, a Kurdish deputy from Makhmour, said that the aerial bombardment had targeted "a kindergarten near a school" in the Makhmour camp, which is home to Kurdish refugees from Turkey.

“Three civilians were killed and two injured,” he added.

No children were killed.

Earlier this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened Iraq to continue its military campaign against the Kurds on Iraqi lands.

He had mentioned Makhmour.

The federal city of Iraq, located nearly 200 km south of the Turkish border, has been hosting thousands of Turkish refugees for more than twenty years and, according to Erdogan, serves as an “incubator” for the PKK.

"If we do not intervene, this incubator will continue to produce" terrorists, he had launched.

"If the United Nations does not clean it up, we will do it as a member of the United Nations," he warned.

Makhmour had already been bombed a year ago, without causing any casualties.

The camp had also hosted thousands of refugees driven from Mosul by the fighting against Daesh.

Baghdad, which has already lost two senior officers in Turkish drone fire, regularly denounces violations of its sovereignty while Turkey has de facto installed a dozen military bases for 25 years in Iraqi Kurdistan. The PKK refuses to recognize the Iraqi Kurdish government and campaigns for a unified Kurdistan straddling Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.