ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish Peshmerga forces have been instructed to “respond appropriately” to any attack on Tuz Khurmatu, an official warned, after Iraqi jets bombed the town center on Sunday, killing four people and wounding 10.
Shalal Abdul, an official from the mostly Turkmen-populated town south of Kirkuk, told Rudaw that the decision to respond to Iraqi attacks on Tuz Khurmatu was taken at an urgent meeting of the Peshmerga forces on Monday.
The Peshmerga strengthened their positions in Tuz Khurtamu and moved into other “disputed territories” outside the official borders of their autonomous northern enclave, after the withdrawal of Iraq’s armed forces from the region last month.
The Peshmerga lines are within range of both the Iraqi army and the Islamic State (IS). But the Kurds are in defensive positions to hold back any advance of the Iraqis or Islamic militants.
Abdul said that the Kurdish forces also have been ordered to repel Iraqi military jets or helicopters that enter the airspace around Tuz Khurmatu.
Anwar Hamadein, an ethnic Kurd and a commander in the Iraqi armed forces, has said that Sunday’s air raid was a mistake. He said the jets had meant to target the nearby town of Suleiman Beg, which is under IS control.
But Abdul refuted that claim, saying no one from the central government in Baghdad has apologized for the attack, in which the dead included a 12-year-old girl.
Officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) suspect that the jets had targeted their local office in the ethnically mixed town of mostly Shiite Turkmen, 85 kilometers south of Kirkuk.
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