Kamaran Abdullah, mayor of Khalakan, told Rudaw that three people were killed in a drone strike on a vehicle between Mergapasha and Khalakan villages, and their bodies are unidentified due to them being completely burned.
“A Jeep vehicle containing three people was bombarded and all three were burned and lost their lives,” Khalakan health director Malband Hamad told Rudaw, adding that their identities remain unknown.
Local security forces have launched an investigation into the incident.
"The car was hit by a drone. The car immediately went up in flames and the three citizens were martyred," Sirwan Lala Sarhad, mayor of Dukan district, told Rudaw.
"The bodies were burned, the car was burned. We could not recognise them," he added.
Sarhad said that the sub-districts within the administration of Dukan have been bombed multiple times over the past few years, however this was the second time a drone targeted a vehicle.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was carried out in an area that Turkey has previously targeted on the grounds of fighting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK is a Kurdish group that has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state in the struggle for greater Kurdish rights for decades and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara.
PKK-affiliated Rojnews accused Turkey of carrying out the strike, saying it struck a civilian vehicle.
In August 2023, a Turkish drone struck a vehicle on the Dukan-Khalakan road, commonly used by civilian vehicles, killing one person.
Ankara routinely accuses the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which controls Sulaimani province, of having close ties with the PKK. A flight ban on Sulaymaniyah International Airport has been in place since April 2023, due to what Turkey alleges is an “intensification” of PKK activity in the province.
On Tuesday, Turkish warplanes bombarded a village in northeastern Erbil’s Sidakan district, killing a shepherd. The area is infamous for clashes between the Turkish military and the PKK.
Updated at 10:51 with comments from the Dukan mayor
Peshawa Bakhtyar contributed to this article.
