• Iraq president slams Turkish bombardment of Kurdish region

CAIRO: Iraq called on Turkiye on Saturday to apologize for what it said was the shelling of Sulaymaniyah airport in the country’s north, saying the Turkish government must cease hostilities on Iraqi soil.

The Iraqi presidency said in a statement that Turkiye has no legal justification to “continue its approach of intimidating civilians under the pretext that forces hostile to it are present on Iraqi soil.”

An explosion struck next to the Suleimaniyah International Airport in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region Friday, local officials said.

The blast came days after Turkiye closed its airspace to flights to and from the airport, citing an alleged increase in Kurdish militant activity threatening flight safety.

Turkiye has spent years fighting Kurdish militants in its east. Large Kurdish communities also live in neighboring Iraq and Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based opposition war monitor, and some local media reported that the explosion was a Turkish drone attack on Mazloum Abdi, the leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main US-backed and Kurdish-led force in Syria.

Officials with the SDF and the Kurdish regional government in northeast Syria denied that Abdi was in Suleimaniyah at the time or had been the target of an attack.

Fethullah Al-Husseini, a representative of the Kurdish self-rule administration in northeast Syria, said Abdi was “carrying on his work and is in northeast Syria.”

The airport’s security directorate said in a statement that an explosion took place near the fence surrounding the airport at 4:18 p.m. local time, causing a fire but no injuries. It said the cause of the blast was under investigation and the airport was operating normally.

Reuters