More than 800 villages have so far been vacated in the border areas of Kurdistan Region amid the ongoing armed conflict between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) fighters, a Kurdish official revealed on Wednesday.
The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Coordinator for lnternational Advocacy, Dindar Zebari, said in a statement that 165 airstrikes have been carried out in the Kurdistan Region while 274 shells landed inside at least 26 villages in Erbil, Sulaimaniya, and Duhok provinces.
He noted that six ground offensives were also conducted in the border areas of the autonomous region against the PKK.
“These attacks jeopardize the lives of the people of the Kurdistan Region, damage the agricultural lands of the farmers, destroy properties, houses, and buildings, and raze the forests,” Zebari said.
According to the KRG official, scores of people were either killed or wounded in those attacks while “more than 800 villages were evacuated because of the ongoing conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party and the Turkish army.”
He additionally called on Turkey and Iran to take into consideration the situation of the civilians and villagers of Kurdistan Region who live in distress because of the continued war in their areas, and put an end to their operations in the border areas of the autonomous region.
While the PKK has positions across the Kurdistan Region’s border areas and attracts the Turkish army, Iran, on the other hand, has already bombarded several areas of the autonomous region recently, threatening to target the opposition groups in the region.
