Iraq demands Turkey apologize for airport attack

SDF commander Mazloum Abdi says he was in a convoy with US troops at Sulaymaniyah airport at the time of the attack.

The Iraqi government has asked Turkey to apologize for an attack on an airport in the northern Kurdish region of the country, denouncing what it called a “blatant assault” on its sovereignty in the area.

The demand on Saturday came as a Turkish Defense Ministry official told the Reuters news agency that no operation by the Turkish Armed Forces had been carried out in that region in recent days.

Iraq’s presidency said Friday’s attack took place in the vicinity of the Sulaymaniyah airport in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region. He blamed Turkey for the attack and said Ankara had no legal justification to continue “intimidating civilians under the pretext that hostile forces are present on Iraqi soil.”

“In this regard, we call on the Turkish government to take responsibility and issue an official apology,” he said.

Turkey, which has been fighting Kurdish armed groups in the east for decades, has carried out several military operations, including airstrikes in northern Iraq and northern Syria against the Kurdish-led forces there.

Ankara views the Kurdish-led forces as “terrorists” allied with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement on Saturday that its chief, Mazloum Abdi, was at Sulaymaniyah airport at the time of the attack, but that there was “no harm”. .

Abdi condemned the attack on Saturday, telling the Kurdish North news agency that he was in a convoy that included US-led coalition troops and members of the Iraqi Kurdish anti-terror force at the time of the bombing.

Asked about the reason for the attack, Abdi said “it is a clear message from the Turks that they are upset and opposed to our international relations and want to damage them.”

Abdi added that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was seeking a “free victory” ahead of the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections next month.

A US official confirmed to Reuters that there was an attack on a convoy in the area and that US military personnel were on it, but said there were no casualties.

About 900 US troops remain in Syria, mostly in the Kurdish-administered northeast, as part of a US-led coalition fighting remnants of the ISIS, or ISIL armed group.

An informed source close to the leadership of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party that controls the Sulaymaniyah area, and two Kurdish security officials also confirmed to Reuters that Abdi and three US servicemen were near the airport.

Al Al Jazeera’s Ameer Fendi, citing sources at Sulaymaniyah airport, said the attack “damaged a large part of the facility’s outer fence, but caused no casualties.”

He noted that the attack came days after Turkey closed its airspace to aircraft traveling to and from Sulaymaniyah due to what he said was intensified activity there by PKK fighters, saying the bombing had heightened tensions between the main parties in the Iraqi Kurdish government.

A statement from the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, which is mainly controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, appeared to blame the PUK for Friday’s events. He accused them of provoking an attack on the airport and of using “government institutions” for “illegal activities”.

Ankara has close ties to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which is the largest party in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and dominates in the regional capital Erbil.

Its rival, the PUK, has closer ties to the PKK and is dominant in Sulaymaniyah.

Fendi, reporting from Erbil, said that “the presidency of the Iraqi Kurdish region has asked the two sides to stop exchanging accusations and investigate the circumstances of this recent bombing.”

“This tense atmosphere between the two sides of the Kurdish regional government comes at a time when airspace in Turkiye remains closed to flights from Sulaymaniyah airport, and at a time when many say that differences between the two parties in the government they should reach a limit. final… as the people here prepare for the legislative elections scheduled for the end of this year,” he added.