‘We were surrounded by fire’: Duhok villagers battle blazes blamed on Turkish bombs

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Villagers who had expected they would be harvesting their crops now are instead lamenting the loss of their orchards after what they said were three days of Turkish bombardments that sparked several wildfires near Metina and Gare mountains in Duhok province.

“How can we not be heartbroken when our house is being looted or burned. This is our land. Land cannot be sold,” Abdulqadir Ismail, an elderly resident of Derishke village in Amedi, said, referring to a wildfire caused by a suspected Turkish bombardment. He lost the orchard he had spent years caring for.

He said that the villagers cannot visit the areas that are burning because they fear being targeted by Turkish aircraft. All he could do was helplessly watch his orchard burn. He had already sold off his livestock because he could not take them to nearby plains for grazing. 

The fires have caused a “great loss,” Rafaat Derishki from the same village told Rudaw.

Turkey began intensifying its decades-long war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Duhok province in mid-June after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly said he would launch a new offensive this summer. Ankara has deployed hundreds of troops to the province. 

Recent Turkish bombardments have also caused wildfires in Dure and Behduhe villages and Kani Masi subdistrict. Both villagers and civil defence teams are unable to safely put out the fires because they worry they could be seen as targets by Turkish forces.

Turkey and the PKK each blame each other for the numerous blazes.

The PKK claimed in a statement on July 1 that the Turkish army was “putting pressure on the civilian population to leave the combat zone.”

Daragle village in Amedi is among the most affected villages. Wildfires have left nothing for the farmers.

“Using civilians in the village of Dargale as shields, the terrorists fired mortar bombs at our troops and began setting fire to the forests so that their location could not be determined,” the Turkish defense ministry said in a statement in June. 

On Wednesday, villagers filmed two Turkish helicopters as they bombed the surroundings of Guharze village, causing a massive wildfire. Villagers told Rudaw that they have not seen PKK fighters in the village. 

“Last night, Turkish air forces bombarded Guharze farms with a drone. Unfortunately, a fire started in the village at 8pm. The fire continued into the early morning the next day. The youth of the village tried to control the fire at 5am, but at noon the fire restarted,” villager Ravand Guharzi told Rudaw on Wednesday.

He added that later the same day, three Turkish helicopters came and set the area around the village on fire. “The fire spread very quickly. Tens of dunams of orchards have been burned so far and thousands of trees are burning,” he said.

Guharzi said the fire was less than a kilometre from the village. 

“This is the worst day of my life,” Karvan Guherzi from Gugarze village said in a Facebook post on Wednesday, publishing footage of helicopters starting a fire on the hillside by his village. He and several other villagers were working to extinguish one fire when the helicopters started a new one. 

“I and a group of youth tried to put out the fire, but unfortunately the Turkish helicopters came and set the areas surrounding us on fire. We were surrounded by the fire, which forced us to return to our homes with crying eyes because all our efforts were in vain,” he recounted, thanking God for sparing their lives. 

Rudaw has learned that most of the wildfires have yet to be brought under control, putting the villages and residents at risk.

The United States-based Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a rights group that closely monitors the Turkey-PKK conflict, said in a report last month that more than 20,000 dunams of agricultural land had been burned in the Kurdistan Region, primarily in Duhok province, since mid-June. 

At least 182 families have been displaced since Turkey’s latest deployments to Duhok province, Kamaran Osman, a member of CPT, told Rudaw.

Naif Ramazan and Hevidar Zana contributed to this article.