Lebanese Foreign Ministry condemns Zakho's Turkish attack

The Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants participated in signing the condolence record, which was opened at the Iraqi embassy building in Beirut on July 25, 2022, in which he expressed his condemnation of the Turkish attack on one of the resorts in Zakho district of Duhok governorate.

In a statement obtained by PUKmedia, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said, "The Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Abdallah Bou Habib, participated in signing the condolence record that was opened in the embassy building on 25/7/2022 to express his condemnation of the Turkish bombing of the Parakh resort in the town of Zakho in the Kurdistan Region."

He added, "The minister expressed his full solidarity with the Iraqi government and people," stressing "the importance of maintaining Iraq's security and stability, and respecting international conventions and norms."

The recent deadly Turkish rocket attack on one of Zakho's tourism resorts in Duhok killed 9 Arab tourists and 22 others from Iraq’s central and southern governorates were injured. 

International and local officials and organizations have strongly condemned the Zakho attack through protests, attacks on the Turkish embassy in Baghdad and Turkish visa application centers, calls to boycott Turkish products, and anti-Turkey hashtags on social media.  

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) strongly denounced the attack during the urgent session of the council on Tuesday. 

Turkey has carried out cross-border offensives of varying magnitude allegedly against the PKK for decades. However, in recent years, it's begun to establish more of a sustained presence in a growing number of bases and checkpoints dotting the mountains of the Kurdistan Region despite calls from Iraqi authorities to stop these actions. 

The PKK is an armed group fighting for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey and is designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara.

Thousands of acres of land have been burnt and many villages have been evacuated due to Turkish bombings, and even civilian casualties have fallen due to the continuous Turkish operations in the Kurdistan Region. The Turkey-PKK conflict has killed at least 597 civilians, and 226 “individuals of unknown affiliation” since July 2015, according to the International Crisis Group. 

The Turkish military has also developed a network of roads connecting the military bases and Turkish territory to facilitate resupply and reinforcement and strengthen their matrix of control over the occupied areas. From the mountain emplacements, Turkish artillery began firing on civilians living in and working on the agricultural lands in the valleys.



PUKmedia