Terrorist PKK has bases in Iraq’s Erbil: Local official

ERBIL, Iraq (AA) - The PKK terrorist group has established “military bases” in Erbil province in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, according to a local official.

“The PKK has established headquarters at Makhmur Camp and Karajuk Mountain,” Makhmur District Governor Rizgar Muhammed Ismail told Anadolu Agency.

“They are training militants there,” he said.

The PKK first gained a foothold in the Makhmur district in 2014 under the pretext of fighting the Daesh terrorist group.

“The PKK doesn’t allow [Kurdish] security forces or Peshmerga into the Makhmur Camp, which it has turned into a military base,” Ismail said.

He went on to assert that the group had established eight facilities inside the camp for training militants.

He also said the number of people inside the PKK-held Makhmur Camp had outstripped the local population due to the recent influx of militants.

The group has also set up checkpoints and dug ditches in the nearby Karajuk Mountain region, Ismail said, forcing local farmers to abandon their land.

Located some 30 kilometers south of KRG administrative capital Erbil, the Mahkmur district had been part of Nineveh province until Kurdish Peshmerga forces captured it after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The PKK now reportedly controls some 600 villages in the Qandil Mountain region and a number of others near the Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish borders.

Although the Peshmerga purged Sinjar of Daesh militants in 2015, the PKK has largely retained control of the district, where it refuses to allow Peshmerga forces to assume control of the area.