Posted: 08/19/2015 at 11:05am | IP Logged

By Dan Wooding, Founder of the ASSIST News Service

NORTHERN IRAQ (ANS – August 12, 2015) -- The German public TV channel ARD reported yesterday (Tuesday, August 11, 2015) that Assyrian villages in the Qandil mountains were hit by the recent Turkish air strikes against the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org), the villages hit by air strikes were Sharanish, Baz, Barwary Bala, Hayes, Dawoodiya and Margerija.

One Assyrian village the German reporter visited is Sharanish, located in the district of Zahko, near the Turkish border. Sharanish has hosted 60 Assyrian families from the Nineveh Plain who were driven out by Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in August of 2014. Among the displaced Assyrians are many from the Assyrian city of Baghdede.

A displaced Assyrian said in the interview “the airplanes are over our heads. They bomb the area and we do not know where we can escape to.”

AINA went on to say that in Dawoodiya there is a refugee camp with 700 families. The majority of the refugees are Yezidis from Shengal, but about 20% of them are Assyrians from the Nineveh Plain and Mosul.

There were no injuries or fatalities caused by the air strikes, but there was extensive property damage.

An Assyrian resident told AINA the PKK should not place its camps and warehouses so close to villages, as this endangers the residents.

Photo caption: 1) Christians reclaim the Iraq village of Bakufa from Islamic State. 2) Dan Wooding pictured outside the Kurdistan Parliament in Erbil, Northern Iraq.

Source: Assist News Service