Turkish air raids kill five civilians in northern Iraq

The civilian death toll of Turkish air raids in northern Iraq rose to five on Friday, local officials said, as Ankara kept up a cross-border offensive against Turkish Kurdish rebels.

One Turkish soldier also died in northern Iraq on Friday in clashes with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Turkey's defence ministry said.

Despite official protests from Baghdad, Turkey on Wednesday launched operation "Claw-Tiger" by land and air into the mountainous terrain of northern Iraq where the PKK has bases.

Three civilians were killed on Friday when a Turkish air strike hit their cars, said Ouarchine Mayi, mayor of Chiladzi in Dohuk province, which neighbours Syria and Turkey.

Another local mayor, Serbast Sabri, said the body of a fourth civilian was also found, two days after he had gone missing.

Turkish commandos in northern Iraq are being supported by warplanes, attack helicopters, artillery and armed and unarmed drones. Turkish Ministry of Defence via AP

A shepherd was killed early Thursday morning when Turkish air raids hit the Bradost district, an official from northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Ihsan Chalabi, told AFP.

Turkish special forces have landed by helicopter in Iraqi Kurdistan to flush out PKK guerrillas from hideouts in the region's remote mountains.

Turkey has sporadically bombed PKK bases in the region, but local activists say its dramatic escalation has prompted scores of families in the area to flee.

The PKK, which Ankara brands a "terrorist" organisation because of its decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, has not reported any casualties so far.

Iraq's foreign ministry has summoned Turkish ambassador Fatih Yildiz twice this week, demanding Ankara withdraw its special forces and halt the bombing campaign.

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But Mr Yildiz has been defiant, telling Iraqi authorities that if Baghdad did not take action against the rebels, Ankara would continue to "fight the PKK wherever it is".

Iraq even summoned Iran's envoy in response to cross-border shelling of Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.

Iran, which has its own Kurdish minority, has also been fighting Kurdish rebels who use Iraq as a base.

Saudi Arabia has also condemned the Turkish operations inside northern Iraq.

But there has been no direct comment from Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, who is himself a Kurd and is close to top officials in the autonomous Kurdish region.

The Iraqi Kurdish regional government considers the PKK a rival group but has been unable to uproot it from its mountain hideouts.

It has, however, tolerated the presence of around 10 Turkish military bases inside its territory for the past 25 years.
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Iraqi kurds, some of them wearing protective masks due to Covid-19, march during a demonstration to denounce the Turkish assault in northern Iraq, in Sulaimaniyah. AFP

Kurdish riot police stand guard during a demonstration to denounce the Turkish assault in northern Iraq. AFP

An Iraqi kurdish woman confronts riot police as she takes part in a demonstration to denounce the Turkish assault in northern Iraq. AFP

Turkey launched a rare ground assault into northern Iraq on June 17, deploying special forces against rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which is blacklisted by Ankara as a "terrorist" group. AFP

Baghdad demanded Ankara immediately halt its assault in northern Iraq, where Turkish special forces and helicopters have been targeting Kurdish rebel hideouts. AFP

Iraqi kurds march during a demonstration to denounce the Turkish assault in northern Iraq, in Sulaimaniyah city, in the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq. AFP

A Turkish army helicopter flies over mountains in the province of Sirnak, near the Turkish-Iraqi border, south-eastern Turkey. AFP file

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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts

Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.

The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.

Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.

More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.

The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.

Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:

November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.

February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.

December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.

July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.

May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.

New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.