An unidentified drone attack has killed a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and injured another near northern Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah, according to security sources and local officials.
The attack on Saturday was the first of its kind in months and occurred as the PKK has begun the first steps towards disarmament, ending its armed campaign against the Turkish state.
The drone attack hit a motorbike in the area, according to Iraqi outlet The New Region.
The mayor of Penjwen, in Sulaimaniyah, Hemin Ibrahim, confirmed that the drone targeted two people in a border village within the district, resulting in one dead, Kurdistan24 reported.
“The two individuals were riding a motorcycle when they were targeted. One was killed, and the other sustained injuries,” he told the news outlet.
Ibrahim told Kurdistan24 that the strike occurred Saturday morning.
No group or country has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
A small ceremony was held last Friday in Sulaimaniyah in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, where 20 to 30 PKK fighters destroyed their weapons rather than surrendering them to any government or authority.
The symbolic process was conducted under tight security and is expected to unfold throughout the summer.
The PKK announced in May that it would abandon its armed struggle in May, after 40 years of fighting.
For most of its history, the Kurdish group has been labelled as “terrorists” by Turkiye, the European Union and the United States.
More than 40,000 people were killed in the fighting between 1984 and 2024, with thousands of Kurds fleeing the violence in southeastern Turkiye into cities further north.
Turkiye’s leaders have welcomed the disarmament process, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stating that the ceremony last week marked an “important step towards our goal of a terror-free Turkiye”.
A Turkish parliamentary commission is expected to define the conditions for the reintegration of PKK fighters into civilian and political life in Turkiye.
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