CPT report: Five civilians killed in Turkish military campaign in one month

The Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an international network set up to support teams of peace workers in conflict areas across the world, released a report on the civilian casualties in Turkey's latest incursion into Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).

According to the report, released on Thursday, the Turkish military campaign claimed the lives of five civilians, three children among them, within a month between 21 May and 21 June, and injured 15.

The report also noted that not only areas along the Turkish-Iraqi border, but also settlements like the town of Kalar, as far as 280 km from the border, were targeted in air strikes.

In a recent drone strike, four people, allegedly associated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), were killed in Kalar in Sulaymaniyah province, and one was injured.

Civilian fatalities

The report stated that two of the civilian fatalities were 43-year-old Aram Haji Kaka Khan and his 50-year-old brother-in-law Ismaeel Ibraheem, killed in the same drone strike on 21 May in the village of Tutaqal, 140 km south of the Iraqi-Turkish border.

On 26 May, a field neat the town of Bamarni in the district of Amedi was hit by mortar shells as a group of children were playing football in the field. 13-year-old Yousif Kovan and 11-year-old Avand Hishyar were killed. Eight-year-old Sipan Farhad was severely injured.

12-year-old Salih Khdir was killed on 15 June in the Yazidi town of Sinune, Sinjar, in a drone strike, while helping his father in the family-owned bookstore.