Kurdistan / Iraq: 450 families driven out by continual artillery attacks

Iranian troops have in the past few days repeatedly carried out artillery attacks on Kurdish and Assyro-Chaldaic villages in northern Iraq. According to information received by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) in Arbil about 450 Kurdish and Christian families from the province of Sulaimaniya have had to flee after their houses were hit or shells fell in their fields and gardens. „The constant attacks mean dangerous aggression against the free and peaceful Kurdistan, the only federal province of the neighbouring country of Iraq in which – like a signpost for the Near East – the ethnic groups live together in an exemplary manner and in which striking progress is being made in reconstruction“, said the President of the GfbV International, Tilman Zuelch, on Wednesday in Goettingen. „We appeal urgently to the international community to protest to the government of Iran against these attacks and so to give protection to the only zone of freedom and progress in Iraq with its multicultural population.“ The following villages lying between ten and twenty km from the Iranian border have been taken under fire: Barda Qalshew, Qirnaqa, Bish Aashan, Zahrawa and Bast. The same happened on 2nd September to the towns of Khinere, Khakurkê, Lolan, Kelaschin, Birikim, Berdanaze, Mardow and Goschine.

The federal province of Kurdistan in northern Iraq is largely speaking peaceful, the population being made up mainly of Kurds. The Christian Assyro-Chaldaeans and Turkmen have been given rights of culture, language and in politics and the smaller religious communities of the Yezidi and the Mandaeans enjoy freedom of worship. Both nationalities have culture institutes, radio, television and press in their own languages.