ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Shrapnel caused by recent Turkish bombardment hit the front of a villager’s house in Duhok province’s Hirore village and the family told Rudaw they barely survived.
Hassan Abdullah lives with his wife and daughter in Hirore. Their house is isolated by about three kilometers from the other nearly 300 houses in the village, according to the chief of the village, Azad Adeeb.
“There has been constant bombardment there all the time over the last three days,” he told Rudaw English late on Tuesday. Turkey “does not discriminate between the PKK and villages when it bombards. They just want to kill Kurds.”
The chief or mukhtar added the Turkish army bombed an area nearly 50 meters from Abdullah’s house at 9:15 pm on Monday, causing some 10 pieces of shrapnel to hit the front of the house.
Only 54 of the 300 houses in the villages are inhabited, Adeeb said.
Turkey launched twin military operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Duhok province late April. Hirore village is one of the areas where the fighting is intense.
The PKK is an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey and is considered a terrorist organization by the country. Ankara regularly attacks the group at home and inside the Kurdistan Region.
Abdullah told Rudaw the Turkish army’s constant bombardment in the vicinity of his house was followed by shrapnel bursting into the patio of his home, with one piece hitting his bed at the entrance of the house. Luckily, he was not in bed at the time as it was late afternoon.
Holding some pieces of shrapnel he had collected from his house, he said when some warplanes left the airspace over the village, others replaced them.
The bombardments have also caused several cracks in his house.
“We are currently on alert and cannot even irrigate our farm. We can’t do any work while my life relies on pomegranate trees and others,” said the elderly man.
His wife, Habiya Mustafa, said they cannot even go out.
“We can’t go out either during the day or night time. There is constant bombardment.”
Additional reporting by Naif Ramadhan
