'Fighter' killed, civilians roiled as warplanes strike near tourist resort in Sulaimani: mayor

Lawk Ghafuri

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — An air strike has targeted a shop in a village resort near the Iranian border in Sulaimani province, a local official tells Rudaw.

“An unknown warplane targeted a shop in Kuna Masi village in Sharbazhir,” Shaho Osman, mayor of Sharbazhir town in northeastern Sulaimani province told Rudaw on Thursday.

Osman said in a press conference that a “fighter” was killed and at least six civilians wounded when two missiles targeted a pickup truck near a shop near a resort in Kuna Masi, a village popular among tourists. He did not specify what affiliation the fighter was, but added that the civilians are two men, two women, and two children, of whom five are from one family.

The strike killed one man who was in the car," local official Kameran Abdallah told AFP, without being able to specify if the victim was a civilian or fighter. 

"The six wounded consisted of two women, two children and two men, all members of the same family," he added.

The Kurdistan Region's border areas have come under fire from both Turkish and Iranian strikes over the past ten days, as part of a military offensive with the stated aim of targeting suspected positions of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the region.

The Turkish Defense Ministry has said it has bombed hundreds of targets in the mountains between Turkey and Iraq as part of a combined aerial and land-based assault dubbed Operation Claw-Eagle, which began on June 15. 

Video uploaded to Twitter by a user named Jil Swani, which he told Rudaw English was taken by his brother, shows children playing leisurely in a pool of water with their parents. Suddenly, a loud explosion is heard, sending the terrified people running before the video abruptly ends.

The origin of the strike remains unknown. Swani later tweeted that the people pictured in the video he shared are "all physically okay, so that’s very lucky."

Five civilians have been reported killed since the offensive began, including four civilians in Shiladze and Kani Masi towns in Duhok and one in Erbil province's Sidakan region, bordering Iran.

Turkish warplanes have targeted areas in Sulaimani province via airstrikes in the past. For decades, both the PKK and Turkish forces have set up military installations along the Turkey-Iraq border. The rough, mountainous region is home mostly to poor farmers who struggle to earn a living. These mountains are also home to an untold number of guerrillas of the PKK, who for years have used the Qandil Mountains area as a base of operations. But with their presence comes the threat of attacks by Turkish forces, which have frightened and sometimes threatened local villagers.

Last month, Turkish warplanes killed five PKK fighters in an air strike near the Iranian border in Mawat area in northern Sulaimani province, according to a local government official. However, the PKK claimed that the militants were members of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) and were not its own fighters. 

Both the PKK and PJAK use the Kurdistan Region of Iraq as a safe haven from which to launch attacks on Turkish and Iranian security forces. PJAK is considered the Iranian wing of the PKK, but PJAK claims it is merely linked by shared ideology.

Additional reporting by Shawn Carrié and AFP

This story was last updated at 10:30 pm