ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – One civilian was injured on Tuesday by Turkish shelling in Duhok province’s Kani Masi sub-district.
Ramazan Ali told Rudaw he was “thrown” off of his feet when bombs hit around 3km from the village of Hrure.
“I knew I was injured. I walked slowly from here back to the village, [but] no one was there,” he said while receiving treatment for his injuries.
Witness Haji Hassan said that Ali was hit while working in his vineyard late this morning when the shelling took place.
The doctor treating Ali said that he was hit by shrapnel but is in a good condition, and will be sent to Zakho hospital for further treatment.
Turkish armed forces launched Operations Claw-Lightning and Claw-Thunderbolt on April 23, targeting alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions in northern Duhok province. A goal of the operation is to establish a military base to block PKK movements between the Kurdistan Region and Turkey and Syria.
Scores of civilians have been killed and injured in the recent Turkish-PKK conflict in the Kurdistan Region. In the latest incident, two brothers were injured last week by shelling in Duhok’s Zakho district. Another was injured in the village of Deshish in the north of the province.
The PKK is an armed group fighting for increased rights for Turkey's Kurdish minority, and has bases in the Kurdistan Region's mountains. It is regarded as a terrorist organization by Ankara.
In addition to civilian casualties, Duhok’s environment has been severely damaged, people’s houses and livestock have been hit, and scores of villages have been evacuated this year.
This year, the Kurdistan Region has seen more deadly clashes in the conflict with the PKK than Turkey, according to figures compiled by the International Crisis Group, which tracks the conflict. In the first four months of 2021, there have been 67 fatalities, 55 of them (or 82 percent) in the Kurdistan Region. The dead are 19 Turkish soldiers, 34 PKK fighters, and two civilians.
Since the decades-long Turkey-PKK conflict was reignited in 2015 following the collapse of peace efforts, 5,372 people have been killed, 773 of them (or about 15 percent) in the Kurdistan Region, including 43 civilians.
Additional reporting by Naif Ramazan
