BAGHDAD: A senior military official in Baghdad said Tuesday that a drone which killed three Kurdish counterterrorism officers had originated in neighboring Turkiye, and condemned the violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.
Three members of the counterterrorism forces of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region were killed and three wounded in Monday’s drone strike on Arbat airfield, southeast of the region’s second city of Sulaimaniyah.
Around 5 p.m. (1400 GMT) Monday, “the drone entered Iraqi airspace, crossing the border from Turkiye, and bombarded the Arbat airfield,” which is mainly used by crop-spraying aircraft, said General Yehya Rassoul, spokesman of the federal armed forces commander in chief.
“This attack constitutes a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” he said, adding: “Iraq reserves the right to put a stop to these violations.”
Turkiye has stepped up its drone strikes on Kurdish targets in both Iraq and Syria in recent months, although deaths among the Iraqi Kurdish security forces remain rare.
“These repeated attacks are incompatible with the principle of good neighborliness between states. They threaten to undermine Iraq’s efforts to build positive and balanced political, economic and security relations with its neighbors,” Rassoul said.
Turkish military action has principally targeted the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and its Syrian Kurdish ally, the People’s Defense Units (YPG).
A Turkish drone strike on Sunday killed a senior PKK official and three fighters in the Sinjar Mountains of northwestern Iraq, Iraqi Kurdish authorities said.
The United Nations mission in Iraq condemned the attack on Arbat airfield.
“Attacks repeatedly violating Iraqi sovereignty must stop,” it said. “Security concerns must be addressed through dialogue and diplomacy — not strikes.”
The Turkish army rarely comments on its strikes in Iraq but routinely conducts military operations against PKK rear-bases in autonomous Kurdistan as well as in Sinjar district.
The PKK has been waging a deadly insurgency against the Turkish state for four decades and the conflict has repeatedly spilt across the border into northern Iraq.
Turkiye operates dozens of military posts in northern Iraq under an agreement originally struck with the government of executed dictator Saddam Hussein.
In April, Baghdad accused Ankara of carrying out a “bombardment” near Sulaimaniyah airport while US soldiers and the commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance dominated by the YPG, were present.
Iraq says drone which killed three Kurdish officers came from Turkiye
https://arab.news/y2s4b
Iraq says drone which killed three Kurdish officers came from Turkiye
- One security source said initial information suggested a Turkish drone was used in the attack against a suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) target
Sudan drone attack on Darfur market kills 10: rescuers
- According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone attack on a busy market in Sudan’s North Darfur state killed 10 people over the weekend, first responders said on Sunday, without saying who was responsible.
The attack comes as fighting intensified elsewhere in the country, leading aid workers to be evacuated on Sunday from Kadugli, a besieged, famine-hit city in the south.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in a conflict which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
The North Darfur Emergency Rooms Council, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid across Sudan, said a drone strike hit Al-Harra market in the RSF-controlled town of Malha on Saturday.
The attack killed 10 people, it said.
The council did not identify who carried out the attack, which it said had also sparked “fire in shops and caused extensive material damage.”
There was no immediate comment from either the Sudanese army or the RSF.
The war’s current focal point is now South Kordofan and clashes have escalated in Kadugli, the state capital, where a drone attack last week killed eight people as they attempted to flee the army-controlled city.
A source from a humanitarian organization operating in Kadugli told AFP on Sunday that humanitarian groups had “evacuated all their workers” from the city because of the security conditions.
The evacuation followed the United Nations’ decision to relocate its logistics hub from Kadugli, the source said on condition of anonymity, without specifying where the staff had gone.
- Measles outbreak -
Kadugli and nearby Dilling have been besieged by paramilitary forces since the war erupted.
Last week, the RSF claimed control of the Brno area, a key defensive line on the road between Kadugli and Dilling.
After dislodging the army in October from the western city of El-Fasher — its last stronghold in the Darfur region — the RSF has shifted its focus to resource-rich Kordofan, a strategic crossroads linking army-held northern and eastern territories with RSF-held Darfur in the west.
Like Darfur, Kordofan is home to numerous non-Sudanese Arab ethnic groups. Much of the violence that followed the fall of El-Fasher was reportedly ethnically targeted.
Communications in Kordofan have been cut, and the United Nations declared a famine in Kadugli last month.
According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration, more than 50,000 civilians have fled the region since the end of October.
Residents have been forced to forage for food in nearby forests, according to accounts gathered by AFP.
The conflict has effectively split Sudan in two, with the army controlling the north, east and center while the RSF dominates all five state capitals in Darfur and, with its allies, parts of the south.
Doctors without Borders (MSF) said on Sunday that measles was spreading in three of the four states in Darfur, a vast region covering much of western Sudan.
“A preventable measles outbreak is spreading across Central, South and West Darfur,” the organization said in a statement.
“Since September 2025, MSF teams have treated more than 1,300 cases. Delays in vaccine transport, approvals and coordination, by authorities and key partners are leaving children unprotected.”
