Two brothers injured by Turkish shelling in Duhok

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Two brothers, both shepherds, were injured early Wednesday morning when a bomb hit their house while they were sleeping in the Zakho district of Duhok province where Turkish forces are carrying out a military campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“It was 2:30 [am]. A bomb hit us. We were sleeping. I didn’t see anything. I wanted to get up and I saw blood trickling down my neck. I was conscious but I couldn’t get out of bed,” Hassan Muhsin, 20, told Rudaw in a low, croaky voice while lying on a bed at Duhok’s Emergency Hospital.

Doctors have told him he needs surgery on his foot. His brother Ali Muhsin, 16, was also injured but is in better condition.

The brothers are two of five shepherds staying in two houses in the Darkar region of Zakho. 

“It’s on the main street. It’s a touristic place… people come and go and the situation was very calm,” Ali Mahmoud, who owns the 1,000 animals the shepherds were tending, told Rudaw at the hospital. “Two months ago the Turkish army and PKK ruined our situation.”

The PKK is an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. Ankara considers it a terrorist organization and frequently bombards areas in the Kurdistan Region and northern Iraq’s disputed territories on the grounds of targeting PKK positions. In April, Turkey launched two new operations, Claw-Lightning and Claw-Thunderbolt, against the PKK within the Kurdistan Region’s northern borders. 

Mahmoud said both Turkey and the PKK were told “that it’s an inhabited place, it has a number of families and houses.”

Scores of Kurdistan Region civilians have been killed in Turkey’s operations and hundreds of villages have been emptied, their residents displaced during three decades of conflict. A civilian was injured Tuesday near his village Deshish.  

Batifa sub-district, located in Duhok province, is an area regularly targeted by Turkish shelling. Videos sent to Rudaw English from Banka Sare village showed bombs landing a few meters away from houses.

“There are six families left in Banka Sare. There are more houses, but they are evacuated due to the bombardments. Around 12 families used to live in that village, but there are six left now,” Hakim Ghazi told Rudaw English on Wednesday from the area.

Some houses were damaged by shrapnel on Tuesday afternoon, according to Ghazi. He shared videos he filmed on Tuesday of smoke rising from Turkish shelling and his young niece crying, calling out to God, "protect us."

“We can hear gunshots this morning, but it’s far away from us,” Ghazi said.

This year, the Kurdistan Region has seen more deadly clashes between the Turkish army and the PKK than Turkey, according to figures compiled by the International Crisis Group, which tracks the conflict. In the first four months of 2021, there have been 67 fatalities, 55 of them, or 82 percent, in the Kurdistan Region. The dead are 19 Turkish soldiers, 34 PKK fighters, and two civilians.