"Baghdad's joint delegation searched the camp. We called for the protection of civilians, and we said that the Kurdistan Region has not allowed our people to enter Erbil and Duhok for two years," Haji Kachan, co-chair of the Makhmour Camp Council, told Rudaw on Monday.
Makhmour camp hosts more than 12,000 Kurdish refugees who fled persecution by the Turkish state, mainly in the 1990s. It is located in areas disputed between Erbil and Baghdad. Ankara believes the camp has ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). On June 5, a Turkish airstrike near the camp killed three people and on Friday, Turkey claimed it killed a senior PKK official near Makhmour.
The Iraqi government delegation that visited included representatives from the interior and migration ministries, as well as security officials. They asked to set up an Iraqi administration in the camp and make some changes in order to increase protection for the residents, according to Kachan.
The deputy commander of Iraqi Joint Operations on Monday said they need to boost protection for the camp. “Security will be enhanced with the presence of local police forces,” said Lieutenant-General Abdul Amir al-Shammari.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is concerned about the camp because residents don’t have recognized identity documents. “The camp is a special situation for us. The problem of the camp residents is that they don’t have official identifications issued by the government of Iraq or United Nations. We don’t know that the information on the identification card is information on the holder or not, because they are not official,” Dindar Zebari, international advocacy coordinator for the KRG, said in a press conference on June 8.
On June 2, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Makhmour is the next target after the Kurdistan Region’s Qandil mountains, where the PKK has its headquarters. The PKK, an armed group fighting for greater rights for Kurds in Turkey, is on Ankara’s terror list and Turkey frequently pursues it across the border. The Turkish military is currently conducting two operations against the PKK in northern Duhok province.
Asked about the Turkish strikes on Makhmour, Jeffrey Prescott, deputy to the US ambassador to the United Nations, said on June 6 the US is opposed to “targeting of civilians,” which would be a “gross violation of international humanitarian law.”
Additional reporting by Sarbaz Siyamand
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