“We are preparing for coordination and holding elections, rather than starting a civil war,” PUK spokesperson Saadi Ahmed Pira told reporters Monday, denying his party’s involvement in the arsons.
The PUK spokesperson further said that the second person possibly could have been a member of his party previously, but he was not when he committed the alleged crime.
Pira said that Hemin Mirany, chief of staff to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) interior ministry, intentionally mentioned his party’s name when identifying suspects behind the catastrophic blazes in the three provinces in recent months.
Mirany had said two of the three suspects arrested during their joint investigation with the Iraqi interior ministry were affiliated with the PUK, with one being a member of the party-linked Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG) and the other a member of the PUK. He claimed that they had been “trained” by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on how to commit the crimes.
Pira charged that Mirany, a member of the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), was targeting the PUK as part of the election campaign.
“The sponsoring and executing party of this topic is the PKK, which is a banned organization,” Miqdad Miri, spokesperson for Iraq’s interior ministry, had said. He did not name the PUK.
“Their purpose in this matter was to hit the commercial interests of one of the countries they are opposing directly,” Miri added, likely referring to Turkey, and to “impact the economy and security situation in the provinces of the [Kurdistan] Region directly, and create a state of discontent among the people in the provinces.”
The fires incurred around $300 million in material damage, according to Miri.
The PKK, an outlawed party in Iraq, has denied it was behind the blazes, calling on Baghdad to reveal the “real perpetrators.”
In April, Erbil Governor Omed Khoshnaw said that authorities had suspected arson after the city’s famous Langa bazaar caught fire twice in less than two months. Also in April, a massive fire swept through central Duhok’s Chale bazaar, burning more than 300 shops.
A month later, shopkeepers in Kirkuk’s Ottoman-era Qaysari bazaar said they were suspicious about the source of the fire because it broke out in different areas of the bazaar at the same time.
