Turkish Airstrikes Kill 3 Yazidi Fighters in Iraq
Three Yazidi fighters were killed and three others were wounded by a Turkish airstrike in northern Iraq on Tuesday, regional officials said. A local official with ties to the Yazidi militia disputed that account, saying that one shepherd died and no fighters were killed.
The Kurdish regional government said that the strikes targeted the headquarters of the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) militia in the village of Chumu-Khalaf.
The Yazidis, a minority ethnic group indigenous to Kurdistan, and their militias, such as the YBS, played a pivotal role in ousting the Islamic State (IS) group from the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar. This occurred following the collapse of the Iraqi army and the subsequent withdrawal of Kurdish forces in 2014. From 2014 to 2017, a conflict raged between IS and Yazidi forces in Sinjar, during which IS kidnapped and killed thousands of Yazidis in operations that the UN has classified as a genocide.
The YBS is associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU. The PKK is a frequent target of Turkish airstrikes.
Turkey’s state-owned broadcaster TRT reported on Tuesday that the military had killed 126 terrorists in the past month.
