The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemned “in the strongest terms” an attack last week in Iraq’s Dohuk province that killed nine Iraqi tourists and wounded dozens.
All U.N. member states should “cooperate actively with the government of Iraq and all other relevant authorities” in investigating the attack, Security Council President Ronaldo Costa Filho said in a written statement on Monday.
Nine civilians, including two children, were killed and 23 were injured in a bombardment of a tourist resort in the Dohuk province of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq on Wednesday. The Iraqi government has blamed Turkey for the attack, calling on it to respect Iraq’s territorial integrity and international conventions. Iraq filed a complaint to the UNSC, demanding an emergency session regarding the “Turkish act.”
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On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was responsible. The PKK, which is labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States and European Union, has fought a four-decade war for autonomy from Turkey at the cost of around 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish. It has several bases inside northern Iraq.
“We cannot do such a thing. It is not possible for Turkey to take such an action with its friends and brothers,” Erdoğan said in an interview with the TRT news channel. He said the attack was one of the usual terrorist acts of the PKK and its affiliates.
[Irak Duhok’taki saldırı] Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan: Terör örgütlerinin bugüne kadar alışılmış olan eylemlerinden bir tanesidir. Dert, Türkiye ile Irak arasındaki bu olumlu gelişmeleri bozmak.https://t.co/9R6dAhJLYA pic.twitter.com/AmLm3gYL1u
— TRT Haber Canlı (@trthabercanli) July 25, 2022
Turkey regularly carries out air strikes in northern Iraq and Syria as part of a long-running regional campaign against the PKK and its northern Syrian offshoot, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). It has also established military bases in Iraq’s north, prompting protests from Baghdad and repeated calls for it to withdraw from Iraqi territory.
The Security Council expressed its deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims, to the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurdistan region, wishing a speedy and full recovery to those who were injured.
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On Saturday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuat Hussein said more than 22,700 Turkish violations against Iraq’s sovereignty have been recorded since 2018. The ministry has submitted 296 memoranda of protest against Turkish interference, he said.
There is only one official document, signed by the Turkish and Iraqi governments in 1984 and valid for one year, that allowed Turkish forces entry inside Iraq to a distance of 5 kilometres, Hüssein said.
Turkey’s military has entered 105 kilometres into Iraq, an Iraqi Defence Ministry report said, news website Rudaw reported on Saturday.
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