Girl Killed, Eight Injured in Iraqi Airstrike: Kurdish Official

BAGHDAD – A 12-year-old girl was killed, and eight other civilians were injured in an airstrike on a Kurdish-held town in Iraq’s northern Salahuddin province, according to a Kurdish security forces official.

Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the Kurdish peshmerga fighters, stated that the strike took place on Sunday when military aircraft targeted residential buildings in the center of Tuz Khurmato.

Iraqi government forces are currently engaged in battles against Sunni Islamist insurgents, primarily from an ultra-radical group known as the Islamic State, in the region.

The Shi’ite-led government in Baghdad announced plans to provide further details about the incident in a briefing scheduled for Monday.

The rapid advance of insurgents, which has seen them capture extensive areas of northern and western Iraq over recent weeks, has raised international concerns regarding the potential fragmentation of the country.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish forces, who govern an autonomous region in northern Iraq, have capitalized on the turmoil to expand their territory by up to 40 percent, including key oilfields and the city of Kirkuk, which they consider their national capital.

Tuz Khurmato, located approximately 88 km south of Kirkuk, was also captured by the peshmerga last month after the Iraqi army withdrew in the face of the insurgent onslaught. The insurgents have since engaged in clashes with both the peshmerga and Turkmen militias in the Tuz Khurmato area.

Overall, the security situation across Iraq remains highly unstable. On Sunday night, five people lost their lives and 16 others were injured in a bomb explosion at a cafe in the Washash district of northwestern Baghdad.