Eight villages near Amedi town in northern Duhok province have been emptied and another 602 villages in the province are also at risk and may need to be evacuated, according to Kamaran Osman, a member of the Community Peacemakers Teams (CPT).
“Most of them were from Miska village and all of its residents, 26 families, have evacuated,” Osman told Rudaw on Thursday.
According to Osman, Turkish armed forces have carried out 285 strikes in the Kurdistan Region from June 15 to July 12, with most targeting locations in Duhok province.
Some 65,000 dunams (65 square kilometers) of Duhok’s farmland has been burned in the conflict, according to data from the organization.
In June, farmers and livestock breeders from the Sidakan district were forced to relocate from the cooler highlands, which are ideal for farming and grazing, due to Turkish bombardments of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They have relocated to the hotter lowlands.
“In total, the area of Sidakan is 1,617 square kilometers. We can say that 46 percent is not under the administration [of the Kurdistan Region] anymore because the PKK has movements around this area. After 2017, it has fallen under the control of Turkey,” Ihsan Chalabi, district mayor of Sidakan, told Rudaw.
Turkey deployed hundreds of troops and military vehicles into the Kurdistan Region in June, establishing checkpoints and conducting patrols in Duhok’s Barwari Bala area. The latest military campaign has sparked renewed fears among villagers.
In a meeting on Wednesday, Iraq’s National Security Council denounced Turkey’s military “incursions” into the Kurdistan Region and called on its northern neighbor to respect its sovereignty.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has not yet commented on the recent escalations in its territory. However, its interior ministry told reporters on Tuesday that Baghdad, Erbil, and Ankara were in discussions regarding the matter.
Civilians are often caught in the crossfire of the conflict between Turkey and the PKK. Many families have been forced to flee their homes because of clashes, especially those in northern Duhok province near the border with Turkey, leaving entire villages empty.
A parliamentary report published in 2020 said that the Turkey-PKK conflict has left over 500 villages empty across the Kurdistan Region.
Written by Didar Abdalrahman
Hastyar Qadir contributed to this report
