Iraq says Turkey killed Arab tourists in artillery attack on Kurdistan resort
The attack, which Turkey denied in a statement, came a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran to win Tehran's backing for a further invasion into northeastern Syria.
At least nine Iraqi civilians were killed and dozens wounded in artillery strikes on a tourist resort in the Kurdistan Region today, which the Iraqi government blamed on Turkish forces.
Noting that most of the victims were women and children, Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said in a statement that Turkish forces had “committed an explicit and blatant violation of Iraqi citizens by targeting a tourist resort in the governorate of Dahuk in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq today.” Kadhimi said the Arab tourists had died as a result of artillery strikes.
The statement, one of the toughest of its kind, said that Iraq rejected the use of “security justifications by any party to threaten the lives of Iraqi citizens” and reserved “its full right to respond to these attacks.”
Kadhimi convened an emergency meeting late Wednesday of the Ministerial Council for National Security. The council tasked the Foreign Ministry with preparing a report on “the repeated Turkish attacks on Iraqi sovereignty and security” and to then submit an official complaint to the UN Security Council. The council also decided to pause efforts to send a new ambassador to Turkey, while summoning the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad.
