Zilkan military base near Nineveh’s Bashiqa district, which houses Turkish troops, was the subject of a rocket attack on Thursday. The rockets missed the target, landing in nearby villages, according to Sardar Sheikh Yahya, mayor of Sheikhan district.
“Both rockets landed in open spaces, without resulting in any casualties or material damage,” Yahya said, adding that no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Yahya also stated that the source of the attack is the same as previous attacks on the base, which is in the vicinity of the city of Mosul.
Raising the estimated number of rockets to four, the Kurdistan Region’s counter terrorism directorate (CTD) confirmed the news later in the evening in a statement, still not reporting any damage.
Home to Turkish personnel in Zilkan, the base is located 10 kilometers away from the town of Bashiqa in Nineveh province.
The base has been the target of at least seven attacks to varying degrees since the start of the year, the latest of which was a drone attack on May 21.
Eighteen rockets were fired at the base in February, by a group calling itself Ahrar Sinjar, in retaliation to Turkish airstrikes the previous night in Shingal.
Turkey-Iraq relations were strained in the wake of the deployment of some 150 Turkish soldiers to Iraq in December 2015. Turkish troops were deployed to the area under the pretext of training Iraqi and Kurdish forces in their fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).
The troops are still present in the area despite calls from Iraqi officials for them to leave.
