Drone Attack kills 2 journalists in Iraq, suspected to have been attacked by the Turkish Army

Jakarta –

A drone strike has killed two female journalists in the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. Local officials blamed Türkiye where the military was operating.

Reported AFPOn Saturday (24/8/2024), the anti-terrorism service in the regional capital Arbil said that the victim who was killed was a fighter of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). But officials in the city of Sulaimaniyah said they were journalists.

An Iraqi security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that drones possibly belonging to the Turkish army attacked a vehicle carrying journalists in Sayyid Sadik, east of Sulaimaniyah.

When contacted by AFP, the defense ministry in Ankara said the attack was not carried out by Turkish troops. Later, the anti-terrorist service in Erbil reported an attack by a Turkish army drone on a vehicle of Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters in the Sayyid Sadik area.

A PKK officer, his driver and a fighter were killed in the bombing, he said. However, the head of the Sulaimaniyah journalists’ union, Karouan Anwar, told journalists that the two women who were killed were known to work in the world of journalism and media.

At the same time, the director of the Kurdish media production house CHATR, Kamal Hama Ridha, said that he hired the two journalists, saying that one of them lives in the Sulaimaniyah region, and the other is a Kurd from Turkey.

The deputy prime minister of the Kurdish region, Qubad Talabani, described the attack as an unprovoked crime and a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

“The victims of the drone strike… were two journalists and they were not members of the armed forces and they did not pose a threat to the security and stability of any country or region,” he said.

(Azh/Azh)