SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A parliament’s committee has prepared a report on Turkish attacks on the Kurdistan Region, calling on the government to file a lawsuit against Turkey through Baghdad.
The Kurdistan Parliament formed a committee including several lawmakers to investigate an attack on a Peshmerga convoy on Mount Metina last month.
The convoy was hit either by a rocket or an improvised explosive device (IED) as it was heading toward a point on the mountain, where the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has bases.
Five Peshmerga were killed and seven others were wounded in the attack.
The parliament’s committee visited the area of the attack and other areas where Turkey is carrying out operations against PKK targets.
Member of the committee Balanbo Mohammed said the committee had given the report to the parliament’s presidency, including speaker, deputy speaker and secretary.
“We referred in the report that the PKK is Turkey’s justification for the attacks and aggression,” Mohammed told Esta Media Network.
Turkey has taken its decades-old conflict with the PKK deep into the Kurdistan Region, establishing military bases and deploying armed military drones against the fighters in their mountain strongholds.
“If Turkey gives rights to the Kurds in Northern Kurdistan, there won’t be morality for the PKK’s struggle [there],” the lawmaker said, referring to Kurdish areas in Turkey.
“The PKK has no other place to go, except for the border between Iraq, Iran and Syria,” he added.
The committee has called on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to file a lawsuit against Turkey in the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council through Baghdad due to the continued attacks on the Region, Mohammed noted.
“If Turkey has done what it is doing against the Kurdistan Region to another country, the whole world has come on the line,” he said.
Regarding the attack on the Peshmerga convoy, the lawmaker said the committee didn’t see the vehicle on Mount Metina when it went there because “it had been removed”.
“Therefore, we cannot make decisions and cannot say it was carried out by the PKK,” the lawmaker said.
Authorities in the Region accused the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) of attacking the vehicle on Mount Metina in the Region.
The Ministry of Peshmerga said the PKK fighters “ambushed” a unit of the Peshmerga forces on the mountain in Amedi district, northeast of Duhok.
The ministry further said the PKK fighters had used light and heavy weapons in the attack.
The PKK denied the accusations and called for investigations into the attack.
The People’s Defense Forces (HPG) said its fighters had fired into the air to warn the Kurdish forces but they had not used the weapon to destroy their vehicle.
“It is true that our forces had fired some bullets as warning, but certainly the weapon which destroyed the vehicle was not used by our forces,” the HPG said.
The attack was condemned by the Kurdish prime minister, the Kurdistan Region’s presidency, the Iraqi presidency, and the U.S. embassy to Iraq.
