IRBIL: Five Iraqi Kurdish security personnel were wounded in two drone attacks in northern Iraq in less than 48 hours, authorities in the autonomous Kurdistan region said on Tuesday.

Authorities blamed a “terrorist group” for the separate attacks in a region that has seen repeated clashes between Turkish forces and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party. 

“A terrorist group launched two separate drone attacks yesterday (Monday) and this morning targeting peshmerga bases” in Dohuk province, the region’s security council said. The attacks wounded five peshmerga, it added.

Kamran Othman of the US-based Community Peacemakers Teams, who monitor Turkish operations in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirmed the attacks but was unable to identify the perpetrators.

He added that the peshmerga were establishing a new post in a “sensitive area” that has long been the site of tension between the PKK and Turkish forces. There was no immediate claim for the attacks, which came weeks after the PKK announced a ceasefire with Turkiye in response to their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan’s historic call to the group to dissolve and disarm.

Blacklisted as a “terrorist group” by the EU and the US, the PKK has fought the Turkish state for most of the past four decades.