ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A suspected Turkish drone attack targeted Makhmour refugee camp in Erbil province on Friday, injuring a female resident of the camp. The attack was carried out at around 9:30 am, causing great damage to one of the houses inside the camp, and wounding a 50-year-old woman, according to media affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The full extent of the damage caused by the strike has yet to be determined. Iraqi authorities have reportedly launched a probe into the attack. The strike marks the second attack on Makhmour camp in under a week. Another suspected Turkish drone attack on the camp on Saturday wounded at least three people. Makhmour Camp hosts over 12,000 Kurdish refugees from southeast Turkey. The majority of the residents came from villages depopulated during Turkey’s conflict with the PKK. The camp is located in a security vacuum in an area disputed between Baghdad and Erbil and has been hit several times by Turkish air and drone strikes targeting alleged PKK members. Civilians have been killed in the strikes. Ankara believes the PKK uses Makhmour Camp as a training ground, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2021 calling it an “incubation center for terrorism.” Turkish forces have carried out a string of strikes on alleged PKK positions in retaliation for an attack early October in front of the interior ministry’s general security directorate in Ankara. The military arm of the PKK claimed responsibility, saying it was an “act of legitimate defense” against Turkey. The PKK is an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey but is proscribed as a terrorist organization by Ankara. It has bases in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Turkey considers Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria to be offshoots of the group.
