Unidentified drone kills three people in Sulaimani province

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Three people were killed when an unidentified drone hit a vehicle in southeastern Sulaimani province on Friday, a local official told Rudaw. There has recently been a series of deadly aerial attacks on busy main roads in the province blamed on Turkey. 

Hemin Ibrahim, mayor of Nalparez subdistrict where the strike took place, told Rudaw that the drone hit a vehicle, killing three people. The “bodies were completely burnt,” he said, making identification difficult. 

The strike took place on a busy road commonly used by civilian vehicles. 

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility. 

Rojnews, a media outlet affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), reported that the vehicle was hit by a Turkish drone. Turkey frequently targets areas in Sulaimani province on the grounds of attacking the PKK. 

The mayor said that when the drone hit the Toyota Corolla car, there were other vehicles nearby but they were not impacted. The road is the main artery into the Bashmakh border crossing with Iran.

Two days earlier, a suspected Turkish drone struck a car on Sulaimani province’s Dukan-Khalakan road, which lies on one of the main routes between Erbil and Sulaimani cities. Two people were wounded and one of them, a newly-engaged man, later succumbed to his injuries.  

The Erbil-based Directorate General of Counter Terrorism (CTD), which often reports Turkish attacks in the Kurdistan Region, said on Wednesday that a PKK intelligence officer was killed in a Turkish drone attack in Sulaimani province’s Mawat district earlier in the day, north of Sulaimani city near the border with Iran. 

CTD is unofficially linked to the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which has had rocky relations with the PKK for decades. There have been clashes over control of territory between KDP-affiliated Peshmerga forces and PKK fighters in bordering areas in recent years. 

A similar drone attack against a vehicle in Sulaimani province's Aghjalar subdistrict on Sunday was blamed on Turkey. 

The Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraqi government, and the international community have been silent about these recent aerial strikes in Sulaimani province.

Updated at 5:43 pm