Turkish airstrike in Iraq kills 18 Kurdish Peshmerga forces

Eighteen members of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces were killed by a Turkish airstrike targeting local armed groups in northern Iraq, in an apparent accident, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Turkish warplanes bombed sites in Jabal Sinjar along the Syrian border during the early hours of Tuesday, killing Peshmerga forces nearby.

“Turkish warplanes, at 2.30 am on Tuesday, bombed sites in the mountains of Sinjar, targeting sites belonging to an armed faction established by the PKK party,” a report published by the Turkish counterterrorism agency said.

The Peshmerga are the Kurdish Regional Government's armed forces and the Asayish its intelligence service.

Sources in the city of Dohuk confirmed the arrival of seven wounded and the bodies of four dead to a hospital in the city, all members of the Peshmerga who fell as a result of the Turkish airstrikes.

The Peshmerga headquarters was close to the site of the attack, the source explained.

Lieutenant General Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of the Peshmerga ministry in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish government said the overnight strike apparently targeted a Yazidi militia allied with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which Ankara, a key ally of the Iraqi Kurdish government, considers a terrorist organisation.

Turkey has repeatedly targeted PKK positions in Iraq and has targeted the Kurdish People's Protection Units in Syria with artillery and tanks.