For four hours last night, the Turkish Air Force bombed the village of Sharamesh, forcing 37 families to flee, including eight families that had escaped the Nineveh Plain under the threat of Islamic State violence. Ankara’s war against the possible emergence of a Kurdish state continues.
Amadiyah (AsiaNews) – Between 11 pm and 3 am last night, Turkish planes carried out air strikes against a Kurdish village in Kurdistan, northern Iraq, destroying houses, fields and even the local water storage facility. For Mgr Rabban al-Qas, Chaldean bishop of Amadiyah and Zaku, “We must have the courage to call this for what it is: real terrorism!”
The Turkish Air Force sought to hit PKK bases (the Kurdish Workers' Party, which is considered a terrorist organisation in Turkey), but struck instead 37 families that had been living in the village of Sharamesh for years, a few kilometres from Zaku, including eight families that had fled the Nineveh Plain before it was overrun by Islamic State (IS) group.
"All these families have fled and now can no longer live in the village because everything has been destroyed, including the water storage," said a distressed Mgr Rabban.
"This morning, as soon as he found out what had happened, the patriarch of Baghdad immediately offered a sum of US$ 10,000 to help all these families cope with the emergency.”
“It is high time to denounce these Turkish acts of terrorism. We must have the courage to call this for what it is: real terrorism! These poor people are now terrified and scared. As if the threat from Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group) were not bad enough.”
Officially, Turkey is part of the US-led international coalition against the terror group. However, many accuse Ankara of complicity with the caliphal militia because it allows the group to smuggle weapons, recruits, and oil through its borders. Turkish air strikes in Syria and Iraq are thus aimed more at PKK hideouts than IS targets.
Operations like last night’s have an additional goal, namely prevent the unification of Kurdish areas in Syria, Iraq and eastern Turkey, which could lead to the emergence of a Kurdish state.