SKEINIYA, Sinjar, Iraq

Seventeen-year-old Samir Saado was finishing his cleaning shift at the village medical centre when an airstrike hit the building.

"I didn't see anything other than dust and smoke," said Saado, a member of Iraq’s minority Yazidi community. "My leg was stuck under the rubble. I called for help and people were coming but the planes kept striking.”

At least four civilians were killed that day, Aug. 17, 2021, local officials said. Among the dead was Saado’s father, who worked as a cook at the centre in Iraq’s northern Sinjar province, about 100 km (62 miles) from the Turkish border. Saado suffered a broken pelvis and a cracked skull.

The strike was part of escalating attacks by Turkish aircraft and drones in mainly Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria, which have since continued, a Reuters data analysis shows. Western firms have supplied critical components for the drones, which Kurdish and Iraqi officials say Turkey is deploying with increasing frequency.

Airstrikes have surged since Turkey launched “Operation Claw-Lock” in April last year. The aim, the Turkish Defence Ministry says, is to protect Turkey’s borders and “neutralise terrorism and terrorists at source.” Earlier this month , Turkey unleashed air strikes on militant targets in northern Iraq and Syria after the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said it was behind a bomb attack near government buildings in Ankara, in which two police officers were injured.

Northern Iraq is the base of the PKK, which over decades has carried out many deadly attacks in Turkey and is labelled a terrorist organisation by the United States and European Union.

Turkish operations in Syria target the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a militia that Ankara says is a PKK-affiliated terrorist group. The YPG is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S. ally against Islamic State.

Turkey’s Defence Ministry said in a statement to Reuters that all of its operations fall “within the framework of international law, respecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all our neighbours.”

“In the planning and execution of the operations, only terrorists and their positions, warehouses and shelters are targeted, and the utmost care and sensitivity is shown to prevent harm to civilians and to prevent damage to infrastructure and cultural sites.”

Any claims to the contrary “are unfounded, slanderous, and lies,” the statement said.

Reuters could not reach the PKK. The Syrian Democratic Forces said Turkish strikes in Syria are unjustified. A YPG spokesperson said its forces “did not fire a single shot in the direction of the Turkish state.”

Reuters analysed violent incidents recorded by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a global research organisation that collects reports from media outlets, government reports, non-governmental groups and other sources. This analysis shows that in 2022, Turkey carried out at least 2,044 airstrikes in mostly Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria, a 53% increase on the previous year and the highest number since ACLED began documenting strikes across the two countries in 2017. The figure is likely a conservative estimate because Reuters’ analysis excluded airstrikes that may have been conducted in battle.

ACLED draws information about airstrikes in northern Iraq and Syria from sources including the PKK’s military wing, the Turkish state-owned news agency Anadolu and conflict monitors the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Airwars and Liveuamap.

The health centre in Skeiniya is one of at least eight medical facilities hit by Turkish airstrikes or ground shelling between 2018 and the first half of 2023, according to the analysis. Turkey’s government released a statement four days after the strike on Skeiniya. It said President Tayyip Erdogan had assured Iraq’s then Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in a phone call that only members of the PKK and their affiliates were targeted in the most recent operation. The site that was hit, the statement added, was “not a hospital or healthcare centre” but one of the organisation’s hide-outs. It didn’t name Skeiniya.

In its statement to Reuters, the Defence Ministry said Turkey never has and “never would target civilian settlements and especially healthcare facilities and personnel.”

Three local people told Reuters that an injured PKK fighter was receiving treatment at the centre at the time of the airstrike. Two of the sources said the fighter survived. Four members of the PKK-allied Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), who were guards at the clinic, were killed, local officials said.

In some other attacks examined by Reuters, people at the scene were involved or suspected of involvement with the PKK.

Four legal experts told Reuters that they believe the attack on the medical centre violated international humanitarian law and likely constituted a war crime because it is unlawful to target medical facilities, injured fighters and civilians. In July, two NGOs - UK-based Accountability Unit (AU) and Germany-based Women for Justice (WfJ) - filed a complaint on behalf of the victims to the United Nations Human Rights Committee arguing that the attack violated the victims’ right to life under international law.

“The victims’ case is that targeting the hospital, a civilian medical clinic, treating the local community and located far away from any ongoing hostilities that Turkey is currently engaged in, was unlawful and prohibited under international humanitarian law and constitutes a violation of international human rights law,” said Tatyana Eatwell, a member of the legal team. Turkey has not filed a response to the complaint, which may take several years to reach a conclusion.

A spokesman for Turkey’s Defence Ministry told a press briefing last month that Turkey’s military operations are “within the framework of our right to self defence” under international law. Turkish armed forces “only target terrorists” and take great care not to harm civilian sites or the environment,  “showing a sensitivity that no other army shows,” the spokesman said in an opening statement.

Turkish strikes are reaching deeper into Iraq and Syria and covering a wider area, the data analysis shows. In 2017, Turkish airstrikes hit fewer than three dozen locations in Iraq and Syria. In 2022, planes or drones struck more than 240 locations in the two countries. The conflict has killed thousands of people and emptied out hundreds of villages in the past eight years, according to NGOs and local officials.

Turkey’s NATO allies and international organisations are uneasy.

Asked to comment for this article, a Pentagon spokesperson told Reuters that “uncoordinated military operations put at risk” the mission against ISIS and the safety of U.S. and Coalition forces. While recognizing the security threat the PKK poses to Turkey inside its borders, “we urge the Turkish Government to respect Iraqi sovereignty and to coordinate its military operations with relevant authorities,” the spokesperson added.

On Thursday, the United States shot down an armed Turkish drone that was operating near its troops in Syria, the first time Washington has taken such a step.

Two days after the strikes on Skeiniya, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said in a statement it was following developments with “grave concern.”

“Necessary precautions must be taken during military operations, including airstrikes, to protect and minimise harm to civilians who often suffer the consequences of such attacks,” the statement said, without mentioning Turkey.

Whatever the outcome of the human-rights accusations, some analysts say, the Turkish assaults risk backfiring strategically on Ankara by weakening the international alliance against extremist groups in the region. Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, said Turkish strikes “are eroding the very security forces that are holding ISIS back at bay.” In Iraq, the strikes could embolden Iran and pro-Iranian militias to extend their operations. “It could create a precedent for other actors to take advantage and co-opt Iraq,” Lord said.

A LONG WAR

Turkey has been at war with the PKK, an insurgent group demanding greater Kurdish rights, since the 1980s. More than 40,000 people have died in the conflict.

At the beginning, the war was mainly fought in the southeast of Turkey, where the country’s Kurdish population is centred. The PKK operated from the mountainous border with Iraq and established a presence in Iraq’s mainly Kurdish north, a region that is also home to other ethnic and religious groups: Assyrians, Turkmen, and Yazidis. These minorities too have been caught up in the conflict along with Turks, Kurds and Arabs.

In 2013, the PKK declared a ceasefire and directed its members to withdraw into northern Iraq, where the PKK is now headquartered.

When the ceasefire broke down in 2015, the conflict entered one of its deadliest phases. Kurdish militants unleashed bomb attacks in Turkish cities. In one attack by a PKK offshoot in December 2016, a combined car bomb and suicide bombing killed 44 people outside a soccer stadium in Istanbul.

Turkey’s Defence Ministry said in its statement to Reuters that since the start of 2017, the PKK and allied groups have conducted more than 2,200 acts of aggression, including an attack on schools in Gaziantep province in November last year in which a five-year-old child and a teacher were killed. These attacks are “planned in northern Iraq” and “the materials, weapons and ammunition are also stored in these regions,” the ministry said.

The Turkish military, NATO’s second-biggest fighting force, responded by driving deeper into northern Iraq. Military operations against the PKK have strong support among most Turks. Turkey has about 80 outposts in Iraq, at least 50 of them built in the last two years

The Defence Ministry said last month that Turkish forces have “neutralised,” a term usually meaning killed, nearly 39,000 militants since 2015. Over the same period, 1,602 members of Turkey’s security forces have been killed in attacks or clashes with the PKK and its allies, the ministry said in its statement to Reuters.

The statement added that under Operation Claw-Lock “the caves and shelters that the organisation has used for years have been cleared of terrorists one by one.” It said that more than 2,900 weapons and 1.3 million pieces of ammunition have been seized and 4,500 explosives detected and destroyed.

A DRONE STRIKE

Nearly 24 hours before the 2021 attack on the medical centre in Skeiniya, a Turkish drone hit a car in the nearby town of Sinjar. The strike killed two of the vehicle's occupants, Saeed Hasan and Isa Khoudeda, both leading members of the PKK-allied Sinjar Resistance Units, six local sources said.

Turkey’s pro-government Sabah newspaper carried a report of the strike. It said Turkey’s military used a Bayraktar TB2 drone and the MK-82 assisted guidance kit weapon system to target Hasan’s vehicle.

One fighter was wounded and taken to Skeiniya medical centre in the early hours of Aug. 17, three of the local sources told Reuters. The airstrikes hit the centre shortly after his admission, these sources said.

The scene at the medical centre was tumultuous after the attack. A video shot by a local journalist and shared with Reuters shows medicine boxes and X-ray films scattered across the ground. People wailed and ambulance sirens blared. Rescuers darted back and forth; four of them carried a lifeless body wrapped in a blanket and gently placed it into an ambulance. Onlookers stood by one of the few remaining walls of the medical centre. It bore a red crescent to indicate the building was a clinic.

Reuters spoke to a dozen local residents, federal government security officials and local administration officials. All said the facility was clearly marked as a medical centre and was operational at the time of the attack.

The health centre was the only medical facility in the area. It employed at least 11 medical and service staff and had a laboratory, an X-ray facility, and the capacity to perform minor surgeries. Originally a school, the centre had been transformed into a medical facility operated by the Sinjar self-governing local authorities. It provided medical care to fighters of the Sinjar Resistance Units, the Iraqi army and civilians.

Saado and three other eyewitnesses told Reuters that drones were hovering in the area at the time of the attack. One additional eyewitness said he saw fighter jets. All five said the medical centre was hit by at least three strikes about three minutes apart.

Drone expert Wim Zwijnenburg said the strike on the medical centre was unlikely to have been a mistake, particularly given the touted capabilities of Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drone, which is often used in Iraq. The drone is equipped with sophisticated, high-resolution cameras, or optical sensors, capable of capturing intricate details, which enable the operators to observe a target for a considerable period of time before launching an attack, said Zwijnenburg.

Reuters showed Zwijnenburg the footage of the red crescent symbol on the wall of the medical centre. He said that in his view, the drone operator should have been able to see the symbol.

Saado said he and his family had hoped to find peace in Sinjar. A decade ago, when Islamic State militants began murdering and kidnapping Yazidis, accusing them of being infidels, Saado’s family fled their home. They then spent several years in camps for displaced people before settling in a village near Skeiniya in 2018.

"We were in the process of rebuilding our lives...until this attack killed my father. From this moment, life became a nightmare,” Saado said.

Reuters spoke to Saado again last week. He said he paid people smugglers $5,500 to help him reach Europe and is now in a refugee camp in Greece with dozens of other Yazidis.

“I HAD A BAD FEELING”

Turkish airstrikes also reach into Iraq’s Sulaimaniya province that borders Iran.

As Schlier Namiq, a Kurdish woman, was preparing breakfast at her home in the village of Tuta Qal in May last year, she heard a bang. She thought at first it came from the hot oven where she was baking bread. Then her husband Aram Kakakhan, the village mayor, got a call from a shepherd who was tending his animals nearby. There had been a drone strike.

Kakakhan drove to the site, about 5 km from the village, with his cousin Ismail Ibrahim. There they found three wounded PKK fighters, at least one of whom appeared to be alive. The cousins put the fighters in Ismail’s car. They had driven about 2 km towards the nearest medical centre when the vehicle was hit by a second drone strike, leaving no survivors, according to Namiq, other relatives and two Kurdish security officials.

One of the security officials said the PKK had a base in the area. Ibrahim and Kakakhan provided support to the PKK by lending their car, supplying food and sorting out logistics, the official said, but they were not fighters. The families of the cousins denied the two men had any connection to the PKK.

Across northern Iraq, local people say they are powerless to prevent armed groups setting up in their villages and districts. And they fear that turning down requests for assistance from armed groups could put their lives in danger.

On June 15, Namiq visited her husband’s grave on a cliff overlooking a valley and mountains beyond. She brushed away dirt and removed weeds. On the headstone, Kakakhan’s name and the dates of his birth and death were marked green, yellow and red, the colours of the Kurdish flag.

Namiq’s two teenage daughters were beside her.

Drones were hovering in the sky when Kakakhan left the house, 44-year-old Namiq recalled. “I had a bad feeling and told him not to go.”

Three villagers told Reuters they also heard drones over the area before and after the attack on Kakakhan’s car. Turkey did not respond to a question from Reuters about the incident.

On the day she laid her husband to rest, Namiq moved to the Iraqi city of Chamchamal about 40 km away out of concern for the safety of her family. It is the third time she has been displaced. The first was in 1988 after Saddam Hussein ordered a gas attack on Iraq’s Kurdish community. Namiq lost many family members then. But this latest displacement was the hardest, she said.

“It destroyed my life,” said Namiq.

Most residents left Tuta Qal after the attack that killed Namiq’s husband, making it one of about 800 villages that have been emptied because of the conflict since 2015, according to an official with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

It is difficult to determine exactly how many people have been killed in the conflict. According to Reuters’ analysis of ACLED’s data, more than 500 civilians and nearly 2,600 members of the PKK, SDF and affiliates were killed in Turkish airstrikes in mainly Kurdish areas of Iraq and Syria between early 2016 and the first half of 2023. This does not include deaths from clashes, artillery fire, shootings and other violence. ACLED said its fatality numbers should be viewed as estimates. Numbers on fatalities from conflicts are often poorly reported, according to ACLED. Different parties can have an interest in overstating or underreporting the figures, and the dangers of war zones often make it logistically difficult to collect accurate data.

“We were in the process of rebuilding our shattered lives...until this attack killed my father. From this moment, life became a nightmare.”

Reuters also analysed data collected by the International Crisis Group, an organisation that advocates for peace. Crisis Group’s data shows that the conflict in Iraq has killed 177 members of Turkish security forces, 1,293 PKK fighters and 101 civilians between July 2015 and the end of June 2023. Crisis Group does not collect fatality numbers from Syria. Crisis Group also only includes named fatalities in its tally, which is based on reports from local human rights groups, Turkish-language media, media outlets affiliated with the PKK and official announcements by the Turkish armed forces.

A third group, Chicago-based Community Peacemaker Teams, which documents the civilian impact of the conflicts in northern Iraq, estimates that at least 148 civilians have been killed and 221 injured in Turkish operations in Iraq since 2015.  It also estimates that about 444,800 acres of agricultural land were burned between 2007 and 2018 because of Turkish military operations in Iraq.

A ROAD TRIP

Seventeen-year-old Ryam Ziad wore fresh makeup as she set off with her father on a road trip to Iran one morning in early August. She had recently finished her high school exams in the northern city of Mosul and was looking forward to university. This outing with her father, a school principal, was a well-deserved break, relatives said.

On a main road about 10 km before the Iranian border, a drone struck their car, instantly killing the occupants: Ryam, her father Ziad Khedr and his friend Hassan Kashmoula, a communications engineer.

Ryam and her father were returned home the next day in one body bag, the family said. The cause of death, as stated in their death certificates seen by Reuters, is attributed to “100% burns caused by a big explosion.”

Their remains were unrecognisable when they were viewed at the local mosque.

“There were no features left,” said Mustafa Anwar, Khedr’s nephew. “The head was charred, the legs, the arms. We managed to separate the bodies. The body of my uncle was bigger than his daughter's. We carried them and shrouded them, and then we buried them.”

The region’s security agency, Kurdistan Counter Terrorism, said in a statement shortly after the attack that a Turkish drone targeted the car. It said the vehicle belonged to the PKK and one of the occupants was a senior member of the group. It didn’t say which occupant.

The Turkish Defence Ministry said the next morning in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that its forces ‘neutralised’ “three PKK terrorists” in northern Iraq.

The families of Khedr and Kashmoula, both Iraqi Arabs from Mosul, denied the victims had any affiliation with the PKK. A security official in the area where the attack took place also said that the victims were civilians, with no affiliation to the PKK. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Sitting in a room filled with mourners, Nidal Mahmoud, Khedr's widow, said her husband and his friend were on their way to Iran to pick up two older daughters, medical students who were returning home.

“People are dying. Why is Turkey bombing us? They say PKK but they have nothing to do with the PKK.” Her husband, she said, “did not belong to any party, he was a teacher and head of a school. He minded his own business.”

Mahmoud held a photo of Ryam, her school certificate, a shirt, and a dress. “This is what is left of my daughter,” she said. “She wanted to become a petroleum engineer to improve her father’s living standard.”

RESIGNATION

Some Western diplomats and analysts say Turkey’s NATO and European allies are wary of criticising Ankara for several reasons. Turkey is a powerful player in NATO – as shown over the last year when it withheld support for Sweden’s bid to join the alliance, having accused Sweden of harbouring supporters of the PKK. Turkey relented in July, but Turkey’s parliament has not yet ratified the bid.

The European Union, meanwhile, looks to Turkey to help limit the numbers of migrants reaching the continent. And Turkey could play a key role in any agreement to end the Ukraine war, maintaining good ties with both Moscow and Kyiv.

Iraq’s fragmented politics mean neither Baghdad nor the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are strong enough to challenge Turkey's presence.

An air of resignation towards the Turkish raids hangs over the authorities in northern Iraq. Iraqi officials rarely carry out investigations into attacks, and victims hardly ever receive any compensation.

“We know who carries out these attacks … so why would we investigate?” said a federal government security source.

Another Iraqi government official said Turkey does not coordinate with Iraq before carrying out attacks on Iraqi territory. The official added that Baghdad has no influence or leverage over the PKK. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani’s government is new, and tackling the cross-border raids is not a priority.

“In practical terms, little could be done, and they (Turkey) are taking advantage of the situation,” the official said.

An Iraqi government spokesperson said in a statement, “We have been making international efforts with our friends to prevent these violations of Iraqi sovereignty. Indeed, military violations undermine regional and international security and do not serve the interests of Iraq or Turkey.”

“Our government has started putting a plan together to protect the Iraqi borders, such as deploying thousands of border guards and establishing joint security committees that work with the Turkish side.”

The spokesperson noted that Iraq’s constitution forbids armed groups from using Iraqi territory to launch attacks on neighbouring countries.

The Kurdish regional government in Iraq is hamstrung. It is dominated by two parties aligned with two rival clans - the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by the Talabani clan, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by the Barzani clan. As a result, two de facto administrations exist within the Iraqi-Kurdish region.

“The reality is there is absolutely nothing we can do,” KRG’s Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani said to Reuters. “Everybody violates the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Iraq.”

Western firms have supplied critical components for Turkish drones

By Lena Masri and Amina Ismail

Turkey has escalated its use of airstrikes in its fight against the PKK and allies in Iraq and Syria in recent years.

Many of the strikes are carried out by armed drones, including the Bayraktar TB2, according to local officials in Iraq and weapons experts.

The drone’s maker, Istanbul-based company Baykar, is run by brothers Haluk and Selcuk Bayraktar. The latter is married to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s daughter. The company was founded in the 1980s by their father Özdemir and began to focus on drones in 2005. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

At least two Western companies have supplied critical components for the drones. Among them are optical sensors. Weapons experts say these sensors enable unmanned aerial vehicles to surveil and identify targets on the ground and execute airstrikes. There is no indication that Western companies have violated sanctions.

German defence electronics manufacturer Hensoldt told Reuters it has been equipping the Bayraktar TB2 with its ARGOS II optical sensor since 2020. It said it had also supplied the sensor to Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) and Lentatek, two other Turkish manufacturers of drones. Hensoldt said the quantities and exact delivery dates of the sensors were confidential and could not be shared.

“Without these types of sensors drones as we know them wouldn’t work,” said Kelsey Gallagher, a researcher with Project Ploughshares, a Canadian peace research institute.

Hensoldt added that the ARGOS II is developed and manufactured by its subsidiary in South Africa and is free of any components governed by German export law or the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which control the export of a wide range of military equipment and technologies that can be used in weapons.

L3Harris Wescam, a Canadian subsidiary of U.S. defence contractor L3Harris Technologies, has also supplied drone technology to Turkey in the past. In October 2020, the Canadian government suspended export permits for military goods and technology to Turkey while it reviewed allegations that Azeri forces were deploying drones equipped with Wescam’s imaging and targeting systems against Armenia in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Canada cancelled the permits in April 2021 after finding credible evidence that Bayraktar TB2 drones, equipped with Wescam sensors, had been used in the conflict.

"This use was not consistent with Canadian foreign policy, nor end-use assurances given by Turkey," Marc Garneau, who was Canadian foreign minister at the time, said in a statement.

The Canadian government said at the time Wescam had reviewed images shared by Armenia and confirmed delivering a system with the same serial number to Turkey in 2020. Canadian officials and L3Harris did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Turkey did not answer a question about its drone exports.

Sales of the TB2 drone have grown rapidly in the past few years. Baykar has said it has signed export agreements with 30 countries for the drone. Since 2018, customers have included Ukraine, Ethiopia, Libya and Azerbaijan, according to arms trade data through 2022 collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a think tank.

In July, Saudi Arabia agreed to buy the Bayraktar Akinci, another Baykar drone, in what Baykar described as the biggest defence contract in Turkey's history.

In Ukraine, the TB2 drone has helped destroy Russian armoured vehicles and artillery systems.

Elsewhere, Western officials have expressed concerns about the use of Turkish drones.

In December 2021, a senior Western official told Reuters Washington had "profound humanitarian concerns" over the sales of the drones to Ethiopia, which could contravene U.S. restrictions on exports to the country. In May 2021, the U.S. Department of State said it had imposed wide-ranging restrictions on economic and security assistance to Ethiopia. Ethiopia accused the U.S. of meddling in its affairs. A conflict between Ethiopia's government and the leadership of the northern Tigray region killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions.