ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A family in northern Duhok province is in mourning after a civilian was caught in the crossfire as Turkish troops and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) clashed on Friday.
Ibrahim Hassan, 50, was killed in the fight between Turkey and the PKK in the village of Dshesh after he was shot in the chest as he was watering his orchard.
A father of seven, his family has been left devastated.
“The responsibility of 13 to 14 people now falls on my shoulders, I have daughters in law and children, it is all on me now. We all needed him,” Hassan’s widow Bahar Izadin told Rudaw.
“My son did not go to rob anyone or do anything bad, he had just gone to water the orchards,” said Hassan’s elderly mother Amina Abuzed.
Some locals say he was shot by the Turkish army.
“There was firefight between the PKK and the Turkish soldiers… the Turkish soldiers were in a higher position and had more advantage, and the bullet came from them,” said Ahmad Ali.
The PKK is an armed Kurdish group fighting for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. Ankara considers it a terrorist organization. For decades, Turkish forces have pursued the PKK within the Kurdistan Region’s borders.
Turkey has launched a series of operations against the PKK in recent years, with the most recent beginning in April. Duhok’s Metina area, on the Turkish border, is the focus of Operation Claw-Thunderbolt, and Operation Claw-Lightning targets the Avashin and Basyan areas further east.
Civilian populations and the environment have been devastated by the conflict.
Six other civilians in the Kurdistan Region have been killed so far this year, several more have been injured, and 20 villages have been emptied.
A parliamentary report issued last year concluded that at least 504 villages have been emptied across the Kurdistan Region since 1992, and hundreds of people have been killed. In Duhok alone, 366 villages have been abandoned since 1998.
Thousands of acres of land in Duhok have also been scorched, and people’s houses and livestock have been hit by Turkish bombs.
According to figures compiled by the International Crisis Group, which tracks the Turkey-PKK conflict, there have been 144 fatalities so far this year. The dead are 33 Turkish soldiers, 103 PKK fighters, and eight civilians. The majority of the casualties this year have occurred in the Kurdistan Region.
Since the decades-long conflict was reignited in 2015 following the collapse of peace efforts, at least 5,464 people have been killed, including 549 civilians.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has repeatedly called on Turkey to respect its sovereignty and for the PKK to leave the area.
Reporting from Duhok by Yousif Musa
