ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkish military operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdish cities of Turkey after an attack on Sunday have impeded the return of hundreds of people from the Kurdistan region of Iraq, said a witness at the scene, adding that “nobody knows when they will lift the military curfew on the vehicles and cars on their route towards the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing."
“Today, at around 3 pm, while we were on the way returning to the Kurdistan region, close to the Midiyat intersection in the Kurdish city of Cizre, Turkish soldiers halted us, and did not let us return,” Khalid Gardi, a Kurdish cleric from the Kurdistan region who was among the halted people, told Rudaw.
“To represent the crowd of people, I talked to the Turkish soldiers, and they said they were ordered by an upper authority to implement a curfew until further notice to protect the safety of tourists,” Gardi added.
According to other witnesses at the site of the crowd, some 500 trucks, vehicles and cars with Erbil, Sulaimani and Duhok license plates have been stopped. All these cars were on their way from the Turkish and Kurdish cities of Turkey to the Kurdistan region attempting to enter Iraqi Kurdistan.
Several Turkish soldiers were killed or wounded Sunday by roadside bombs blamed on the PKK in Turkey’s Kurdish Hakkari province.
The attack took place in the town of Daglica in the Yuksekova district on Sunday evening. The bombs reportedly went off near two Turkish military vehicles carrying soldiers.
Turkish media said the Turkish air force had launched air raids on PKK targets in the country’s Kurdish southeast following the attack.
