PARAKH, Kurdistan Region - Plastic chairs, children’s toys, slippers, and clothing are what is left behind in a Zakho resort after a tragic string of artillery shelling left nine tourists killed with the youngest being just 11 months old and 23 others wounded over the weekend. According to officials, Turkish forces shelled a tourist site in Parakh village in Duhok province on Wednesday, killing nine Arab tourists and injuring 23 others who were from Iraq’s central and southern provinces. The area has seen armed conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for years. Both have blamed one another for the incident. "Four artillery shells landed here during the shelling. Two of them have landed right inside the resort, while the other two are outside this place,” Yousif Parakhi, owner of the targeted resort told Rudaw’s Naif Ramadhan. “The second one landed in the water. The shell shrapnels are everywhere in this place. This entire area has been damaged,” he added. Locals of Parakh, the only remaining inhabited village in the Sindi area in Darkar sub-district, have decried that in the course of the past two weeks Turkey has started a random bombing campaign of their village and its surrounding. Iraqis have strongly condemned the deadly attack through protests, attacks on the Turkish embassy in Baghdad and Turkish visa application centers, calls to boycott Turkish products, and anti-Turkey hashtags on social media. Iraqi protesters on Thursday called for the expulsion of Turkish ambassador Ali Riza Guney from the country. The Iraqi government on Wednesday called on Turkey to withdraw all troops from the country.
