Northern Iraq drone strike blamed on Turkey kills man

Erbil – One man has been killed in a drone strike in northern Iraq, a local official in the autonomous Kurdistan region said on Friday, attributing the attack to Turkey.

Ankara regularly carries out ground and air operations in northern Iraq against positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

“A Turkish drone strike on a car” killed a man, said Ihsan Chalabi, mayor of the mountainous Sidakan district near Iraq’s borders with Turkey and Iran.

The body found on Friday is of “an inhabitant of the region who is a member of the Peshmerga”, the local Kurdish security forces, Chalabi told AFP.

For decades, Turkey has operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies consider a “terrorist” group.

Both Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government have been accused of tolerating Turkey’s military activities to preserve their close economic ties.

At the beginning of April, a “high-ranking military official” from the PKK was killed in a Turkish drone strike on a car in the mountainous Sinjar region, according to the Kurdistan counterterrorism services.