Get Guardian on Google
Turkey vowed on Saturday to work closely with Iraq to secure their common frontier after two Iraqi border guards were killed in a shooting blamed on outlawed PKK militants.
On Friday, Iraq’s interior ministry said the two Iraqi guards were killed near the Turkish border in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.
“When the Iraqi border forces were carrying out their duties securing the Iraqi-Turkish border, they were fired at by terrorists from the banned PKK organisation” in Zakho district, the ministry said.
A third guard was wounded, it added.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, has several outposts in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases.
Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said on X that “we are deeply saddened by the deaths of two border guards as a result of the attack carried out by the PKK terrorist organisation”.
“It is clear that the PKK terrorist organisation poses a threat to the national security of Turkey and Iraq and violates Iraq’s sovereignty,” he said.
“We will continue to fight together with Iraq against terrorism”.
The attack comes ahead of a planned visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to Baghdad on Sunday.
