Huawei’s Li Peng: Unleashing New Growth in 5G and New 5.5G Commercialization
Iraq mourns dead from shelling attack
The bombardment of a Kurdish hill village that Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi blamed on neighboring Turkey resulted in the deaths of nine tourists, prompting him to declare Thursday a day of national mourning.
According to a Kurdish official, the bodies would be taken from the Kurdish regional capital Erbil to Baghdad where they would be given to the families for burial in their hometowns in southern and central Iraq.
23 persons were also injured by shelling on Thursday in the village of Parakh in the Zakho district, the bulk of them were domestic tourists looking for relief from the heat of the plains in the Kurdish north’s mountains.
Several hundred indignant protestors demonstrated outside the Turkish immigration office in Baghdad early on Thursday in spite of a significant police presence in response to the murders in a local pleasure garden.
The Turkish ambassador should be ejected, demonstrators screamed as patriotic songs played over loudspeakers, according to an AFP journalist.
“We want to set the embassy on fire. “The ambassador must be kicked out,” said 53-year-old protester Ali Yassin. “Nothing is being done by our government.”
Similar demonstrations took place on Wednesday night in the southern city of Nasiriyah as well as in the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.
The prime minister of Iraq cautioned Turkey on Wednesday that Iraq reserves the “right to retaliate” and referred to the artillery fire as a “flagrant infringement” of sovereignty, a stance mirrored by the autonomous regional administration in the north.
In addition to demanding a public apology from Turkey and “the evacuation of its armed forces from all Iraqi land,” Iraq stated it was returning its charge d’affaires from Ankara.
The bombing was not carried out by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, which claimed that “terrorist organizations” were responsible for these “kinds of strikes.”
Operation Claw-Lock, branded by Ankara as a military operation against KDP fighters in northern Iraq, was started in April (PKK).
Since 1984, the PKK has maintained a lethal insurgency in southeast Turkey for Kurdish self-rule, and Ankara and its Western supporters have designated the group as a “terrorist organization.”
As part of its battle against the rebels, the Turkish army has kept dozens of outposts throughout the Kurdish north of Iraq for the past 25 years. Periodically, there have been calls for their removal.
Despite being important trading partners, relations between Iraq and Turkey have been strained by Ankara’s repeated offensives against PKK rear positions in the north.