By Xinhua
Baghdad : Iraqi Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador to Baghdad and handed him a memorandum of protest about the recent Turkish air strikes in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, a ministry statement said on Monday.
Dr. Mohamad Hajj Hmoud, Under Secretary for Legal Affairs and Multilateral Relations at the Foreign Ministry, summoned the Turkish ambassador on Sunday and handed him the memorandum which requested the Turkish authorities to “halt such military actions that effect innocent and cause panic,” the statement said.
The ministry’s statement also warned that such attacks “may affect the friendly relations existing between the two peoples and governments of the two neighbors.”
It said the Turkish air strikes on Sulaimaniyah province “led to the death of a woman and the wounding of four citizens and the displacement of many families in addition to destroying a clinic, a school and ruining bridges.”
Meanwhile, the Kurdish regional government (KRG) condemned the attacks, saying that they were “flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
“These attacks hinder the political efforts exerted to find peaceful solution based on mutual respect,” the KRG’s presidency office said in its statement.
On Sunday, Turkish warplanes carried out air strikes on some Iraqi villages near the border in the Qandil mountains, killing a woman and wounding six people, according to Kurdish security source.
The attacks also damaged several houses and killing some 170 ofthe villagers’ livestock, the source said.
Earlier on Sunday, a statement issued by the Turkish General Staff posted on its Web site said the Turkish warplanes bombed PKK targets in northern Iraq.
It said the warplanes hit PKK targets in regions bordering the Turkish territories as well as in Qandil Mountain, which is further away from the frontier.
Turkish military has launched several cross-border attacks recently in a bid to fight separatist PKK rebels, who use northern Iraq as a launch pad for attacks against Turkey.
Security operations are underway in southeastern and eastern Turkey as 100,000 Turkish troops have massed along Turkish-Iraqi borders in preparations for a possible cross-border operation to crush about 3,000-strong PKK rebels.
The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.