CENTRAL NEWS – A Turkish military base in Iraq was targeted with rockets on Sunday. PUK media reported that at least five rockets were fired at the Zilkan military base near the town of Bashiqa in Nineveh province.
The mayor of Zilkan, Muhammad Amin Goran, told PUKmedia:
“Several rockets landed near the Turkish military base in Zilkan (…) Five rockets hit the base at around 7:50 PM.”
The base housing 150 Turkish troops was earlier targeted on the 3rd of April in rocket strikes by an unidentified group.
Turkish troops had been deployed to the area in December 2015 on the pretext of training Iraqi and Kurdish forces in their fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). Turkey-Iraq relations were strained in the wake of the Turkish deployment.
The town of Bashiqa, only 10km from the Turkish base, historically constitutes the third largest Yazidi settlement in Iraq prior to the massacre of thousands of Yazidis by the ISIS in Sinjar (Shengal) in August 2014.
