#Angry #Iraq #mourns #death #shelling #blamed #Turkey
Iraq on Thursday held a day of national mourning for nine holidaymakers killed in a bombing of a Kurdish mountain village that the government has blamed on neighboring Turkey.
Turkey denied its troops were responsible, instead blaming rebels from the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), prompting Germany to call for an urgent investigation.
The coffins of the nine dead, draped in Iraqi national flags and decorated with flowers, were carried by an honor guard led by senior officials aboard a flight bound for Baghdad from the Kurdish capital of Arbil.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Kurdish Regional President Nechirvan Barzani led the pallbearers onto the military plane with the smallest of the coffins, a child’s coffin, an AFP correspondent reported.
In Baghdad, the bodies were to be handed over to their families for burial.
Shelling on Thursday in Parakh village in Zakho district also injured 23 people, most of them local tourists seeking respite from the heat of the plains in the mountains of Kurdish north.
The deaths in a village pleasure garden sparked angry anti-Turkish demonstrations in cities across Iraq.
In Baghdad, dozens of demonstrators protested in front of the Turkish visa office early Thursday, despite a strong police presence.
Patriotic songs blared from loudspeakers while protesters chanted slogans calling for the expulsion of Turkey’s ambassador, an AFP journalist reported.
Demonstrators brandished portraits of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a “terrorist” and trampled on Turkish flags.
“We want to burn down the embassy. The ambassador must be expelled,” said protester Ali Yassin, 53. “Our government is doing nothing.”
Similar protests erupted Wednesday night in the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
– “Blatant Violation” –
In an unusually harsh rebuke, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi warned Turkey on Wednesday that Iraq reserves the “right to retaliate,” calling the artillery barrage a “blatant violation” of sovereignty — a line advocated by the north’s autonomous regional government was repeated.
Iraq said it was recalling its charge d’affaires from Ankara and demanding an official apology from Turkey and “the withdrawal of its forces from all Iraqi territory.”
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry denied responsibility for the bombing, saying these “types of attacks” were carried out by “terrorist organizations”.
On its Twitter account, the Turkish embassy expressed its condolences “to our Iraqi brothers who were killed by the terrorist organization PKK”.
Germany called for an urgent investigation. “The circumstances of the attack and those responsible must be clarified urgently,” demanded the Foreign Ministry.
“The Federal Government attaches great importance to respect for state sovereignty and international law in Iraq.”
Ankara launched an offensive in northern Iraq called “Operation Claw-Lock” in April, targeting PKK fighters.
The rebels have maintained a deadly pro-Kurdish self-government insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984, and Ankara and its western allies blacklist the group as a “terrorist organization.”
Over the past 25 years, the Turkish army has maintained dozens of outposts in Iraq’s Kurdish north as part of its campaign against the rebels. There have been sporadic calls for their removal.
Iraq and Turkey are important trading partners, but Ankara’s successive offensives against rear PKK bases in the north have been a persistent thorn in relations, particularly when they have caused civilian casualties.
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