IRAQ: Villagers assess damage of Turkish air strikes in northern Iraq

Record ID: 339804

  • Title: IRAQ: Villagers assess damage of Turkish air strikes in northern Iraq
  • Date: 19th December 2007
  • Summary: (BN10) QALAT DIZA, SULAIMANIYA, IRAQ (DECEMBER 17, 2007) (REUTERS) DEBRIS OF HOUSES DAMAGED BY TURKISH AIR STRIKE/ SMOULDERING WRECKAGE PEOPLE SEARCHING UNDER RUBBLE/ DIGGING DEBRIS OF HOUSE SCATTERED ON GROUND MAN STANDING OVER CAVED IN CEILING OF HOUSE RUBBLE COVERING GROUND/ TWO MAN STANDING AMIDST RUBBLE WOMAN SEARCHING AMONG RUBBLE HEAPS OF RUBBLE ON GROUND/ DEAD
  • Embargoed: 3rd January 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA2YN665H7ES5XF1UYSZCGUWRVT
  • Story Text: Villagers on a massive cleanup following Turkish air strikes in northern Iraq.
    Residents of Qalat Diza in Sulaimaniya province, were assessing the damage on Monday (December 17) caused by days of raids and air strikes in northern Iraq.
    Villagers were scouring heaps of smouldering rubble for whatever they can salvage from their homes which they say had been destroyed by Turkish air strikes.
    Turkey says it has a right to use military force to combat Kurdish separatist rebels who shelter in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
    The Iraqi Kurdish regional government criticised the raid.
    On Tuesday (December 18), Iraqi officials said hundreds of Turkish troops had crossed into Kurdish territory in northern Iraq overnight and remained in a remote mountainous area.
    Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for Iraqi Kurdistan's Peshmerga security forces said a force of about 300 Turkish troops on foot, carrying only light weapons, had entered an area in Dahuk, one of three mountainous Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq.
    He said the area was not populated and there were no Iraqi forces present. There had been no clashes although gunshots had been heard, he said.
    A senior Iraqi military official who asked not to be named said the small incursion appeared unlikely to develop into larger military action.

    "I think this is a limited incursion and will not be expanded," the source said.
    The Turkish foreign ministry declined to comment on the reports.
    Officials at Prime Minister Minister Tayyip Erdogan's office were not immediately available for comment.
    Turkish warplanes bombed villages in northern Iraq over the weekend.
    Iraq complained that at least one civilian woman was killed in the weekend strikes, and has said it wants any future military action to be coordinated with Baghdad.
    The incursion comes as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Iraq on a visit.
    The U.S. embassy in Ankara did not immediately comment on the incursion. Washington, which has 155,000 troops in Iraq, said it was informed of the weekend air raids in advance.
    The United States says it sympathises with Turkey's fight against Kurdish guerrillas but does not want Ankara to take large-scale cross-border military action that might destabilise Iraq.
    Tension at the border has been high since October, but a full-scale Turkish invasion of northern Iraq is seen as unlikely, especially in winter months.
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