ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Nearly daily clashes in northern Duhok province have left local populations afraid to leave their villages, even to tend their livestock, a local chieftain said on Saturday.
“Forty-something people in our area have been martyred for no reason and people are afraid to go out in their villages, even in Deraluk. In spring and winter, people tend to go out more often around the Deraluk subdistrict for some tea with their families… even this is dangerous now,” Tahir Rashaveyi, chieftain (mukhtar) of Rashava village told Rudaw on Saturday.
His village is located in the Amedi district of northern Duhok province where Turkish forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) frequently clash.
Rashaveyi said the situation started deteriorating four or five months earlier and now there are airstrikes, shelling, and machine gun fire almost daily.
“There is heavy fighting in our area. Our people are very afraid, especially women and children,” he said.
Most of the villagers work as farmers, but are too afraid to tend to their herds or lands. Up to 50 villages along the road from Shiladize to Deraluk have been affected, according to the chieftain.
More than 500 villages in the Kurdistan Region have been emptied due to the conflict between Turkey and the PKK, a Kurdish armed group that has bases in the mountains of the Kurdistan Region.
Founded in 1978, the PKK initially called for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan but now calls for autonomy. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey.
Turkey began intensifying its decades-long war against the PKK in Duhok province last summer, looking to secure the border region.
In November, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said that the army had “secured” the key Zap area, which was one of the last remaining routes for the PKK to move from the Kurdistan Region into Turkey.
