SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Turkey and Iran carried out 626 attacks on the border areas in the Kurdistan Region in 2021, a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) official said on Tuesday.
KRG Coordinator for International Advocacy Dindar Zebari said there were 216 airstrikes on the areas on the Kurdistan Region’s border with Turkey and Iran last week.
As many as 403 artillery attacks were also carried out on the Region’s border areas, Zebari added, noting that there were also eight ground attacks.
The KRG official said most of the attacks were carried out by Turkey, while some of them were by Iran.
“The Iraqi government which is the main party, the [U.N.] Security Council which is another party and UNAMI which is the representative of the United Nations haven’t been on line sufficiently in the regard,” Zebari said.
“The complaint should be made to the UNAMI and the Security Council, and Iraq’s borders and sovereignty should be supported and it is part of the Security Council’s decision,” he added.
The Kurdish official didn’t say the number of casualties and damages caused by the attacks.
Ankara intermittently carries out airstrikes and artillery shelling against suspected positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on the Kurdistan Region’s border areas with Turkey and Iran.
Turkey has conducted numerous ground and aerial cross-border offensives into neighboring northern Iraq to attack PKK fighters, who maintains bases in the region.
Iran also sporadically carries out artillery attacks against bases of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region. It accused the groups of disrupting the country’s security.
On Sept. 12, secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council Ali Shamkhani asked Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi who paid a visit to Tehran to expel the Kurdish opposition parties from the country.
Shamkhani considered “increasing movements of terrorist groups in the Iraqi Kurdistan region as a matter of threat to the security of the two countries’ borders,” state news agency IRNA cited him as saying.
He urged “the immediate disarmament and expulsion of those groups from Iraq,” IRNA reported.
Regarding Islamic State (ISIS) attacks, the KRG official said the militant group carried out 257 attacks in the disputed territories, including kidnapping and mortar shelling.
At least 387 people were killed and 518 others were wounded in the attacks in 2021, Zebari said.
Thirty-seven people were also kidnapped, he noted.
The militants increased their attacks against civilians and members of the Peshmerga forces last year.
ISIS controlled roughly a third of Iraq between 2014 and 2017. Iraqi forces and Kurdish troops backed by U.S.-led Coalition forces as well as Iran-backed Shia militias defeated the militant group in 2017, but its members still roam areas of northern Iraq and northeastern Syria.
