Iraqi Kurds protest against Turkish bombardments after airport explosion

Several hundred Iraqi Kurds protested on Sunday against repeated Turkish military bombardments of their region, two days after an attack near Sulaymaniyah airport.

The attack on Friday caused an explosion near the airport wall while the commander of the Kurdish-led and US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was present. US troops were also in the area but there were no casualties, the Pentagon said.

About 400 protesters marched in the centre of Sulaymaniyah on Sunday, the second city in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.

They waved the flag of Iraqi Kurdistan and held a banner denouncing the airport bombardment as a terrorist act.

Organised by activists and former parliamentarians, the demonstrators voiced their opposition to “dictator” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey by shouting and chanting, AFP reported.

“This is not the first Turkish aggression against civilian targets in the region,” said Ali Amine, 66, a retired civil servant.

“It has become a permanent attack. Sometimes it's villages, sometimes civilian targets — agricultural land, water or electricity installations.”

Another protester, Fatma Hamid, 55, denounced “the lax positions” of authorities in the region, which has been autonomous for three decades.

Turkey has long maintained military positions inside northern Iraq, where it regularly launches operations against Turkish Kurdish fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The PKK, which Ankara and its western allies classify as a terrorist organisation, operates rear bases in Iraq's north.

A source at the Turkish defence ministry denied any involvement by the country's military in the bombardment of Sulaymaniyah airport.

Since 1984 the PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkey that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Turkey regards the main component of the SDF, the People's Protection Units (YPG), as an offshoot of the PKK.

On April 3, Ankara halted flights to and from Sulaimaniyah until at least July 3, blaming increased PKK activity in and around the airport.

Iraqi President Abdel Latif Rashid on Saturday condemned Turkey's “military operations against the Kurdistan region, the last being the bombardment against Sulaimaniyah civilian airport.”