ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Flights at Erbil and Sulaimani airports resumed late Monday after they were paused for a few hours earlier in the day. There is no confirmed reason for the suspension, but the Kurdistan Region’s transportation minister denied there were any security threats.
“There are no security or administrative issues at the Erbil and Sulaimani airports and no security forces have been moved towards the airports,” Ano Abdoka, minister of Transportation and Communications in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), told Rudaw Monday evening.
Abdoka said that the flights were suspended by Iraq’s civil aviation authority for an unknown reason. He also confirmed that flights at both airports resumed late Monday night. The websites of both airports indicate several flights were cancelled.
Karwan Yarwais, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s transportation and communication committee, told Rudaw that he was in contact with the aviation authority and air tourism board, and claimed there were “uncertainties surrounding the safety of the Kurdistan Region’s airspace due to the presence of drones and UAV.”
Erbil International Airport houses personnel from the global coalition and American forces. Iran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias are frequently blamed for rocket and drone attacks on US installations in Iraq, and Erbil airport has on many occasions been a target of those attacks.
Ankara in April announced it was banning Sulaimani flights from Turkey’s airspace because of the alleged “intensification” of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activities in Sulaimani province, a month after two helicopters carrying Syria-based Kurdish fighters to Sulaimani crashed. The ban will remain in effect until early January of next year.
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