People crowd outside a hospital in Zakho city, where victims of a Turkish shelling on a tourist resort were admitted. At least eight civilians were killed and 20 others injured in a Turkish artillery shelling that struck a tourist resort in the village of Parakh in the Kurdish province of Duhok. Photo: Ismael Adnan/dpa (Photo by Ismael Adnan/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Eight tourists died and another 23 people were injured in a Turkish attack on a mountain resort in Iraq’s northern province of Dohuk, Iraq state media said on Wednesday.
The “fierce artillery bombing” hit a resort in Zakho, a city on the border between Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Turkey, state TV said.
Children were amongst the victims, including a 1-year-old, the Kurdish health minister said in a statement, adding that all the victims died before reaching a hospital.
The Turkish defence ministry said in a statement that two PKK militants had surrendered to a Turkish security point at the Habur border crossing with Iraq, which is about 10 km from Zakho, but made no mention of the attack. The ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Turkey regularly carries out air strikes in northern Iraq and has sent commandos to support its offensives as part of a long-running campaign in Iraq and Syria against militants of the Kurdish PKK and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. Ankara regards both as terrorist groups.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
More than 40 000 people have been killed in the conflict, which in the past was mainly focused in southeast Turkey where the PKK sought to create an ethnic homeland.
The top United Nations envoy to Iraq condemned Wednesday’s attack in a statement published on Twitter and called for an investigation to determine the circumstances surrounding the attack.
We live in a world where facts and fiction get blurred
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