ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Four people were killed in Turkish airstrikes in Choman district, about 95 km northeast of Erbil, in the early hours of Thursday.
The attack, which took place at around 1:00 a.m. local time, targeted the villages of Sarkan, Mawnan, and Wasan, close to the triangle border between Iraq, Turkey and Iran, according to a Rudaw reporter.
“Four young people who were in the area for a picnic and stayed overnight were martyred,” Ahmad Qadir, mayor of Choman, told Rudaw on Thursday morning. He said Turkish fighter jets carried out the attack.
Those killed are all civilians, Qadir said. But PKK-linked media reported that two of them were KRG Peshmerga fighters who were on picnic at the time in the area when the attack happened.
These are the four young men killed in Turkish airstrikes on Choman district, #Kurdistan Region.
— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) March 22, 2018
Background: https://t.co/qR6wjKJgsM pic.twitter.com/WWMyKs1lhy
Turkey frequently targets the border areas of the Kurdistan Region under the pretext there are Kurdish fighters opposed to Ankara hiding out there.
The four people who were killed are all law graduates of Koya University: Shera Mahmud, Kaka Mustafa Warti, Mohammed Ismael Warti, and Darbaz Mohammed.
Their age is between 28 and 31.
Omar Rasul, a relative of Mahmud, said that the four friends visited Sarkan village for picnic. It is the first time that the Turkish military attacks the village mentioned, he said.
"The site [in Sarkan] that the Turkish fighter jets bombed does not have any PKK positions," he said, "it is a residential area where civilians live."
Hundreds of people gathered at a graveyard outside of Erbil to bury Mahmud, a Peshmerga fighter who was planning to get married after the Newroz holidays, one of his friends told Rudaw.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on Wednesday that his forces had “neutralized” 38 fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq in airstrikes on Shingal.
He gave no indication of how or when the 38 fighters were eliminated, and Rudaw has been unable to verify whether any such attacks actually took place.
The PKK is an armed group fighting for greater rights of millions of Kurds in Turkey but is considered as a terrorist organization by Ankara.
President Erdogan on Monday warned his forces may carry out a military operation in northern Iraq, a move Iraq said it strongly opposes.
Last updated at 12:56 p.m.
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