Protesters rally in Iraq's Kurdish region over fatal drone strike that killed two journalists

Several dozen demonstrators gathered on Saturday in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region to protest a drone strike that officials blame on Turkey, which killed two women journalists working for outlets funded by Kurdish militants.

The Friday bombing killed Gulistan Tara, 40, a Kurdish journalist from Turkey and Hero Bahadin, 27, an Iraqi-Kurdish video editor, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Another person was also injured.

While both an Iraqi security source and the counter-terrorism service in the regional capital Arbil attributed the strike to Turkey, the defence ministry in Ankara, when contacted by AFP, stated that it was “not the Turkish army” that carried it out.

“The martyrs will not die,” chanted the crowd of around a hundred people gathered in a park in Sulaimaniyah, the region’s second-largest city, while holding up posters of the two women.

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The CPJ said the journalists worked for Kurdish media production house CHATR, which operates two “news channels funded by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)”.

The PKK, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, has rear-bases in the mountains of northern Iraq.

The Turkish army maintains a network of bases in the region to fight the Kurdish militant group, which is proscribed as a “terrorist organisation” by the European Union and the United States.

“Turkish bombings affect everyone in Kurdistan, the civilian populations are victims,” said activist Robar Ahmed.

“Life in the countryside has almost stopped because it is not possible to live with strikes day and night, every minute and every hour,” she said, speaking at the protest.

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Following a visit to Baghdad by Turkish officials, the federal government declared the PKK a “banned organisation” in March.

Earlier this month, Turkey agreed a military cooperation pact with Iraq that includes joint training and command centres to fight the Kurdish militants.