BAGHDAD: A security agency controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region said on Wednesday that they had uncovered a plot to assassinate PUK leader Bafel Talabani, sharing a video that purported to show six guards saying they had received an order to kill him.
The video, broadcast by a PUK-affiliated security service in the Kurdistan region, showed the fighters describing plans to rent an apartment in a high-rise building near the PUK leader’s headquarters. Footage included snipers with silencers positioned near a window overlooking the party leader’s office.
The guards in the video say they received their orders from Lahur Talabani, a prominent Kurdish politician who is the cousin of Bafel Talabani and leader of the rival People’s Front party.
Lahur Talabani’s office was not immediately available for comment. A member of the People’s Front accused the PUK of using judicial and security institutions to suppress political rivals.
Lahur Talabani was arrested on Friday by PUK-controlled forces after they raided a hotel in Sulaymaniya late on Thursday and clashed for four hours with fighters loyal to him. Police and hospital sources said three PUK commandos and two of Lahur Talabani’s fighters were killed in the fighting.
Security officials said more than 160 of Lahur Talabani’s loyalists were detained alongside him.
A court in Sulaymaniya had issued an arrest warrant for Lahur Talabani on charges of attempted murder and destabilizing the city’s security, judicial officials said. Sources familiar with the situation said the arrest was part of a broader struggle for control over Sulaymaniya, a key stronghold of the PUK.
Lahur Talabani was previously joint president of the PUK until a power struggle led to his ousting in 2021.
“Deploying tanks and hundreds of armored vehicles to arrest a party leader is absolutely unrelated to legal or democratic methods,” said the People’s Front representative, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of arrest.
The confrontation marks the most serious internal armed conflict among Kurdish factions in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The escalation has raised concerns among regional officials and analysts that violence could threaten the relative stability long enjoyed by Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which has largely remained insulated from the broader unrest affecting other parts of the country.
Iraqi Kurdish PUK security force alleges plot to kill party leader
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Iraqi Kurdish PUK security force alleges plot to kill party leader
- The escalation has raised concerns among regional officials and analysts that violence could threaten the relative stability long enjoyed by Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region
Syria’s Kurds hail ‘positive impact’ of Turkiye peace talks
- “The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad
- “We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria”
ISTANBUL: Efforts to broker peace between Turkiye and the Kurdish militant group PKK have had a “positive impact” on Syria’s Kurds who also want dialogue with Ankara, one of its top officials said Saturday.
Earlier this year, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ended its four-decade armed struggle against Turkiye at the urging of its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, shifting its focus to a democratic political struggle for the rights of Turkiye’s Kurdish minority.
The ongoing process has raised hopes among Kurds across the region, notably in Syria where the Kurds control swathes of territory in the north and northeast.
“The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast.
“We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria... We want the borders between us to be opened,” she said, speaking by video link to an Istanbul peace conference organized by Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party.
Speaking in Kurdish, she hailed Turkiye for initiating the peace moves, but said releasing Ocalan — who has led the process from his cell on Imrali prison island near Istanbul where he has been serving life in solitary since 1999 — would speed things up.
“We believe that Abdullah Ocalan being released will let him play a much greater role... that this peace and resolution process will happen faster and better.”
She also hailed Ankara for its sensitive approach to dialogue with the new regime in Damascus that emerged after the ousting of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a year ago.
“The Turkish government has a dialogue and a relationship with the Syrian government. They also have open channels with us. We see that there is a careful approach to this matter,” she said.
Turkiye has long been hostile to the Kurdish SDF force that controls swathes of northeastern Syria, seeing it as an extension of PKK, and pushing for the US-backed force to integrate into the Syrian military and security apparatus.
Although a deal was reached to that end in March, its terms were never implemented.
“In this historic process, as the Middle East is being reorganized, Turkiye has a very important role. Peace in both countries — within Turkish society, Kurdish society and Arab society.. will impact the entire Middle East,” Ahmad said.
Syria’s Kurdish community believed coexistence was “fundamental” and did not want to see the nation divided, she said.
“We do not support the division of Syria or any other country. Such divisions pave the way for new wars. That is why we advocate for peace.”
