Two women, members of the Kurdish minority and journalists, died and a man was injured yesterday in Kurdistan, Iraq, in a drone strike against the vehicle they were riding in, attributed to the Turkish army, which frequently conducts operations in this region targeting its separatist rebels. PKK, local officials told AFP.

The Turkish Ministry of Defense in Ankara, when asked about this bombing, in the Sayyid Sadek sector, in the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, denied that it was a Turkish operation: “it was not the Turkish army”, he assured.

An Iraqi security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that “a drone possibly belonging to the Turkish military bombed a vehicle carrying the journalists” in the Sayyid Sadek sector, east of Sulaymaniyah, the second-largest city. of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iraqi officials have strongly denied that the victims were linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) or media outlets affiliated with it.

“The victims of the aerial bombardment (…) were two journalists, not members of an armed organization that poses a threat to the security and stability of the entire country or the region,” said Kurdistan’s deputy prime minister, Qubad Talabani, the party of which he controls Sulaymaniyah.

In a press release he released, he condemned the “unjustified murder” of the two women and the “flagrant violation of Iraqi national sovereignty”.

“The two women were killed,” confirmed to AFP the head of the Sulaymaniyah branch of the Iraqi Journalists Association, Karwan Anwar, in front of the morgue.

During a press conference, the director of the center of Kurdish media producers CHATR, Kamal Hama Rida, confirmed that two journalists working for his organization, one an Iraqi Kurd from Sulaymaniyah province, the other a Kurd from Turkey, were killed.

For its part, the anti-terrorist service of Erbil, the regional capital of Kurdistan, spoke of a bombing by “a Turkish army drone against a vehicle belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party fighters in the Sayyid Sadek area.”

“A PKK official, his driver and a fighter were killed” in this bombing, according to the same source.

Ankara only confirms some of the bombings it launches on Iraqi soil. It conducts frequent ground and air operations against the PKK in northern Iraq.

The PKK rebels have had rear bases in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan for decades; the area has also been home to several Turkish military bases over the past 25 years.

The Kurdish armed separatist movement, which has been waging an armed struggle against the Turkish state since 1984, is labeled a “terrorist” organization by Ankara, the US and the EU.

Following a visit by Turkish officials to Iraq, Baghdad discreetly designated the PKK a “banned organization” in March.

And, in mid-August, Turkey and Iraq signed a bilateral military cooperation agreement, which notably provides for the creation of joint command and training centers in the fight against the PKK.