The Turkish army, which started the invasion attack on South Kurdistan on 25 May 1983, has made similar attempts many times in the last 39 years. Although these invasion operations were aimed at destroying the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrilla's base areas, South Kurdistan civilians were also targeted, bombed, murdered, even taken prisoner and shot in the attacks by the Turkish army.

The Turkish army expanded the scope of invasion attacks against this part of Kurdistan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the guerrilla movement spread to the whole of Kurdistan. In the second half of the 1990s, the civilian population in the region paid the price for these attacks, in which tens of thousands of Turkish soldiers were used.

Zakho district of Dihok, located near the Northern Kurdistan border, where 9 civilians were killed on 20 July 2022, was the most exposed to the attacks and massacres of the Turkish state. Zakho, which has been the target of the Turkish state since the mid-1990s due to its strategic location, experienced a great massacre in 1995.

While the "Bloody Monday" in Zakho has acquired an unforgettable place in the history of South Kurdistan and the Behdinan region, the Turkish state has started bombing villages and civilian settlements since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Here is the list of the war crimes committed by Turkey against civilians in South Kurdistan:

27 FEBRUARY 1995 ZAKHO MASSACRE: The Turkish army hit Zakho during the "Steel Operation" in 1995, which was the most comprehensive invasion operation up to that time. On 27 February 1995, JITEM members, the counter unit of the Turkish state, carried out a bomb attack in the center of Zakho in order to create chaos and prepare the environment for the invasion attack, whose button would be pressed on 21 March 1995.

As a result of the explosion of a bomb placed in a taxi near a crowded market in the city center of Zakho, 76 civilians lost their lives and more than 100 were injured.

9 SHEPHERDS MASSACRE: On Newroz 1995, the Turkish army, with its 35 thousand soldiers, launched the invasion attack, which it named the "Steel Operation", by occupying the lands of South Kurdistan from four sides. They met  strong resistance from the Kurdistan guerrillas. The invading army, which could not get the desired result against the ARGK guerrillas, turned to civilians.

During this invasion attack, 11 villages on the border line were bombed by the invading army, and many civilian vehicles were targeted. In the first days of April, the Turkish army carried out one of the most brutal massacres. On 2 April 1995, Turkish soldiers shot 9 shepherds in the area between the villages of Bawerkê and Bênata, within the provincial borders of Dihok. The names of the 7 shepherds who were killed for allegedly helping the guerrillas were as follows: Abdülkadir İzzetxan, Ismail Hasan Şerif, Özgür Ebdulkadir, Ebdillah Kerim Huseyin, Abdurrahman Muhammed, Şerif Guli Zikri and Ehmed Fettah.

15 AUGUST 2000, KENDAKOL: In 2000, the Turkish army committed another massacre on the territory of South Kurdistan. On 15 August 2000, warplanes hit about 100 coach tents set up on the Kendakolê plain between Xinêre and Lolan, overlooking the Qaşmukê and Avxwar valleys. In this attack, 30 people, including young children and old people, were killed and dozens were injured.

21 AUGUST 2011, KORTEK: After Kendakolê, the Turkish state again carried out an attack targeting civilians in South Kurdistan on 21 August. Turkish state warplanes targeted the vehicle in motion near the village of Bolê on the Kortek-Ranya road in the Kandil region. The 7 civilians, including 4 children, who were in the vehicle were killed: Hüseyin Mustafa, Mêr Mam Kak, 34-year-old Rêzan Hüseyin, 11-year-old Zana Hüseyin, 10-year-old Oskar Hüseyin, 4-year-old Sonya Şemal and 7-month-old baby Solin.

1 AUGUST 2015, ZERGELÊ: The Turkish state, which restarted the concept of war against Kurdistan with a comprehensive air attack against Medya Defense Areas on the night of 24 July 2015, did not hesitate to hit civilian settlements in this wave of attacks. In the early hours of the morning on 1 August 2015, the village of Zergelê was bombed by Turkish warplanes. 8 civilians were killed and 10 people were injured.

23 JANUARY 2019, DÊRALOK: Since 2017, the Turkish army has started targeting more civilians in South Kurdistan. Between 2017 and 2018 alone, at least 30 civilians were killed in total on different dates and places. The airstrike on Amediyê and the town of Dêralok on 23 January 2019, killed 4 civilians, and constituted a turning point in the history of resistance in South Kurdistan.

The people of Dêralok, who gathered after this massacre, started to organize protests against the Turkish state. After the demonstrations that lasted for a several days, the people of the region entered the military base of the Turkish army in Sheladize and set the military vehicles on fire. Turkish soldiers killed 2 more civilians, including a child.

27 MAY 2019, KORTEK: Like other invasion attacks, the invasion attack launched on 27 May 2019 too targeted civilians. One of the two brothers in a vehicle hit on 25 June in the Goşîn region of Hewler's Soran, lost his life and the other was seriously injured.

27 JUNE 2019: Two vehicles were bombed by warplanes, this time in the area of Kortek in the Ranya district of Sulaymaniyah. Those in the targeted vehicles were returning to their homes after vineyard and garden work. In this attack, Abdullah Ali Mîne and his children Kurdistan Abdula and Heryad Abdula were killed.

MASSACRES IN 2020 AND 2021: Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), one of the non-governmental organizations in South Kurdistan, published a detailed report on the Turkish state massacres of civilians in the region last May. Noting that 109 civilians from South Kurdistan were killed in the attacks of the Turkish state between 2015 and 2021, the CPT reported the following civilian massacres in 2020 and 2021:

18 JUNE 2020: Ebas Mexdît was killed in an airstrike on Turkey's Sidekan region.

19 JUNE 2020: Turkish warplanes bombed the residential areas in the Sheladize town rural area of ​​Duhok's Amediyê district. 5 civilians lost their lives.

24 JUNE 2020: 2 civilians lost their lives in the bombardment of the picnic area in the Sarbajêr district of the city of Sulaymaniyah.

27 JULY 2020: Dilovan Şahîn, Omer Keşanî and Ebdullah Ehmed lost their lives in the bombardment of the Amediyê countryside.

25 MAY 2021: 20-year-old Bawer Ahmed was injured while watering his field in the village of Deşişe as a result of artillery fire by the invading Turkish state. Other farmers in the area were also injured by shrapnel fragments.

26 MAY 2021: 16-year-old Ali Muhsin and 20-year-old Hasan Muhsin brothers were injured when the Turkish state bombed the village of Bihêrê while they were grazing their animals.

1 JUNE 2021: 70-year-old Ramazan Ali was injured by artillery fire by the soldiers of the invading Turkish state while watering his fields in Hiror.

8 JULY 2021: A civilian was injured in the village of Hiror as a result of the invading Turkish state's fire on agricultural lands from the base areas.

13 AUGUST 2021: Ibrahem Hassan Mohamad (51) was shot by the invading Turkish state soldiers while irrigating his fields in the village of Deşîşê in Kanîmasî. Villagers had to leave their houses due to attacks by the Turkish army. Mohamad had briefly returned to the village with 12 others to irrigate the fields to support their families.

20 AUGUST 2021: Ahmed Şakir (40) and Yousif Amir (26) were killed by Turkish soldiers' artillery fire in the Batufa district of Zakho. The families of Şakir and Amir, who came to the region as tourists from Mosul, learned that their relatives lost their lives when the bodies were found 2 days after the incident.