Citing local sources, the Rojnews agency reported that Turkish warplanes bombed the town of Mangêşk in Duhok, southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq) on Monday.

No information has been obtained yet on the damage caused by the bombardment on Mangêşk town, 30 kilometres from the centre of Duhok.

Local sources stated that a fire broke out in the region as a result of the bombardment.

It is reported that local people intervened in the fire, which, however, has not yet been brought under control.

Background

Turkey is penetrating ever deeper into the territory of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). According to information from the local NGO Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), the Turkish occupation offensive "Operation Claw Lock", which was expanded to parts of the Amêdî district in mid-June, now reaches fifteen kilometers deep into the country.

In the previous "Operation Claw Lightning and Thunderbolt", which lasted from April 2021 to April 2022, occupation troops had only advanced seven kilometers into the region and had established themselves in the village of Hiror (Hrure) because the front of the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) could not be broken through. In order to overcome this, the Turkish army is now strengthening its more than 70 military bases in the KRI, which are operating in violation of international law, and is building seven new bases that are concentrated in the Kanî Masî sub-district in Barwarî Bala, which belongs to Amêdî. The population of several villages has already been displaced in recent weeks as a result of this military violence in the southern Kurdish border region, and other villages are now threatened with the same fate - with the approval of the Barzani party KDP, which is allied with Turkey.

At least 602 villages in the Kurdistan region of Iraq are currently threatened with violent evacuation as a result of Turkish expansionism. This figure was also confirmed by CPT, which named 162 villages whose populations have already been displaced since the start of the Turkish "claw operations" in early summer 2020. In order to achieve the long-term goal of destroying the autonomous status of the Kurdistan region and securing Turkey's control over strategically important areas in northern Iraq, in addition to permanent bombings of guerrilla areas, the Turkish army is also carrying out targeted attacks on civilian settlements - under the guise of border security and an alleged "terrorist threat" to Ankara.

Taking advantage of the silence of Baghdad and Erbil, Turkish forces set up checkpoints and started performing identity checks in Duhok, while forcibly evacuating many villages.