Kurds Condemn Turkish Air Strikes Inside Iraq

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The leadership of Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) has condemned Turkish air strikes against positions of Kurdish fighters in its autonomous region, echoing the remarks of the leadership earlier. Masoud Barzani, president of KRG, spoke to Ahmed Davutoglu, Turkey’s prime minister, over telephone on Saturday and “expressed his displeasure with the dangerous level the situation has reached”, according to a KRG statement. Aljazeera reports:

“He requested that the issue not be escalated to that level because peace is the only way to solve problems and years of negotiations are better than one hour of war,” the statement said. “Mr Barzani is ready to do anything within his means to assuage this tension and go back to a situation of peace.”

On Friday, the same day Turkey said it bombed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Syria for the first time, Turkish jets also struck positions in northern Iraq held by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the group fighting against Turkey for more than three decades.

In a related development, Turkish police have been rounding up hundreds of suspected ISIL and Kurdish fighters in cities and towns across the country. As of Saturday, nearly 600 people had been detained. Reuters news agency said Turkish police fired water cannon and tear gas to disperse about 1,000 demonstrators who had gathered in the capital Ankara to protest against military strikes in Syria and northern Iraq.