Eleven civilians dead in Turkish drone attack on Shingal medical center

On Tuesday, a Turkish drone bombed a medical center in Shingal (Sinjar) district killing 11 civilians.

Journalist Qaed Shingali told PUKmedia on Tuesday night that a Turkish drone had bombed a medical center in the village of "Sakiniya" south of Shingal which resulted in the death of 11 civilians, including children, according to preliminary information.

Yazidi activists and intellectuals launched a campaign on social media following the incident, calling on the Iraqi government and the international community to intervene and stop the repeated Turkish bombing of Shingal.

The bombing was the second one in Shingal in just 24 hours. Another drone attack was launched on Monday, which killed two members of the YBS and coincided with the visit of the Federal Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi to the Yazidi village of Kocho.

Turkey continuously carries out offensives of varying magnitude inside Iraqi territories, allegedly against the PKK. However, in recent years, it's begun to establish more of a sustained presence in a growing number of bases and checkpoints dotting the mountains of the Kurdistan Region despite calls from Iraqi authorities to stop these actions. 

Thousands of acres of land have been burnt, many villages have been evacuated due to Turkish bombings, and even civilian casualties have fallen due to the continuous Turkish operations in Iraq. 

According to Al-Monitor, Arzu Yilmaz, a Middle East scholar and visiting fellow at Hamburg University reckons that there are more than 5,000 Turkish forces currently deployed in the Kurdistan Region and Bashiqa, an area under Iraqi central government control lying east of Mosul.



PUKmedia