© Reuters
ERBIL, April 8 (Reuters) – Iraq on Saturday called on Turkey to apologize for what it called an attack on Sulemania airport in northern Iraq, saying the Turkish government must cease hostilities on Iraqi soil.
The Iraqi presidency stated in a statement that Turkey has no legal justification to “continue with its approach to intimidate civilians under the pretext that forces hostile to it are present on Iraqi soil (…) in this regard, we ask the Turkish government take responsibility and present an official apology”.
Lawk Ghafuri, the head of foreign media affairs for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), wrote in a message on Twitter (NYSE:) saying that a drone strike hit the vicinity of Sulemania airport on Friday, but did not caused damages or delays or suspension of flights.
A Turkish Defense Ministry official told Reuters that no operation by the Turkish Armed Forces took place in that region on Friday.
An informed source close to the leadership of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party that controls the Sulemania area, and two Kurdish security officials said that Mazloum Abdi, head of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) , and three US servicemen were near the airport at the time of the alleged attack.
The three sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, said there were no injuries or deaths in the incident.
A US official confirmed that there had been an attack on a caravan in the area and that US military personnel were in it, but there were no casualties.
While Turkey views the Kurdish-led forces in Syria as terrorists and a threat to national security, the United States sees the Self-Defense Forces as an ally that has helped drive Islamic State out of vast swaths of Syria.
Turkey has carried out several large-scale military operations, including airstrikes, for decades in northern Iraq and northern Syria against the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG, Islamic State and the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). .
The attack allegations came days after Turkey closed its airspace to aircraft to and from Sulemania due to increased activity by PKK militants.
Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the banned PKK, which since 1984 has led an insurgency against the Turkish state, a terrorist organization.
(Reporting by Amina Ismail; additional reporting by Hatem Maher in Cairo, Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing in Spanish by Ricardo Figueroa)
