Turkey launched an aerial operation, code-named Claw-Sword, early Sunday, targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region’s mountainous areas, mostly Sulaimani province, and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria. One day later, Iran attacked Iranian-Kurdish armed groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and Komala, in the Region’s Erbil and Sulaimani provinces with missiles and drones. Both campaigns have claimed the lives of several people, including civilians.
The Iraqi foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday that it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns the Iranian bombardment of the Kurdistan region of Iraq with drones and missiles.”
“The repeated attacks carried out by the Iranian and Turkish forces with missiles and drones on the Kurdistan region are a violation of the sovereignty of Iraq, and an act that contravenes international covenants and laws that regulate relations between countries,” it added.
The ministry warned that its territory should not be “an arena for conflicts and settling scores for external parties.”
Turkey claims that the YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the PKK - an armed group which fights for the increased rights of Kurds but regarded as a terrorist organization by Ankara. YPG is the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - which controls northeast Syria (Rojava). The Turkish army has carried out several military operations against these Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, claiming that they pose a threat to its national security.
Ankara has said that its air forces hit 45 PKK targets in the Kurdistan Region and 44 YPG targets in Rojava on Sunday. The Turkish defence ministry claimed on Monday that it has killed 1,441 YPG and PKK fighters in Syria and Iraq during the "Claw" series of operations, which began in 2019.
Several drones and missiles targeted Erbil and Suilaimani provinces on Monday, being launched from the Hamza Sayyid al-Shuhada base of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in charge of parts of the Kurdish areas of Iran. It targeted KDPI and Komala positions, killing a member of the former group.
The attacks came after IRGC’s Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani last week threatened ground operations by Iran against opposition parties taking shelter inside Iraqi land.
