As Ankara continued its operations against Kurdish militants within Iraq, the Iraqi military claimed that it had grounded a Turkish drone over the northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday.
A residence in the city centre was damaged by falling debris, according to police and army officials who spoke to AFP on the condition of anonymity.
According to the police official, a carpenter employed at a nearby construction site was hospitalized following a mishap, although there were no reports of direct casualties.
General Abdel Salam Ramadan, the deputy air defence commander for Kirkuk, announced at a press conference held at the location of the incident that a Turkish drone that had infiltrated Iraqi airspace had been destroyed.
Ramadan stated that the aircraft had originated “from the direction of Sulaimaniyah,” the second metropolis of the Kurdish autonomous region to the north.
Kirkuk, which is ethnically diverse, and the oil fields that surround it are not included in the autonomous region; rather, they are directly governed by the federal government in Baghdad.
For the past twenty-five years, Turkiye has maintained numerous military bases in northern Iraq as part of its campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants.
Its forces conduct operations against PKK targets on a regular basis; however, it only occasionally provides commentary on them.
In March, the Iraqi federal government discreetly declared the PKK a “banned organization.” Earlier this month, the government reached a military cooperation agreement with Ankara that will result in the establishment of joint training and command centres to combat the militants.
Ankara and its Western allies have designated the leftist group as a “terrorist organization” for its lethal on-and-off insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
