Alice in Kurd Country

Friends,

  The Kurdish area is set to blow up. This killing could be the ignition. Too much money and too much hatred and everyone armed. Bring our troops home. They are going to be in the middle of a civil war.

  And, the Turks are bombing the Kurds. But, the Kurds had already been chased from this area by the Iranians. Down the rabbit hole.

Peace, Love and Hope,

Rev O

Kurdish politician fatally shot by police

Death highlights ethnic tension in disputed region

Boston Globe

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police fatally shot a Kurdish politician in one of Iraq's most volatile provinces yesterday, a killing that underlines the growing tensions between Kurds and Arabs in parts of the north.

Even as Iraq has seen a sharp decline in Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian violence, hostility is deepening between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq's north as Kurdish authorities begin to exert more authority beyond the boundaries of their autonomous region.

Riya Qahtan, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, was killed yesterday morning in Jalula, a small town 80 miles northeast of Baghdad in the ethnically mixed province of Diyala, said Jabar Yawer, a spokesman for the Kurdish military, or peshmerga. Jalula has a mostly Sunni Arab population with a substantial Kurdish minority.

The shooting occurred after two Sunni Arab police officers stopped three members of the Kurdish secret service at a market and demanded they show identification. They refused, and within minutes police reinforcements arrived at the scene, arrested them, and took them to police headquarters, Yawer said.

Qahtan then went to the police station and persuaded officers to release the detainees, who had been working as guards for his party. But as the group was leaving, two police opened fire and shot Qahtan, Yawer added.

The two police officers were being investigated as suspects in the shooting, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.  AP

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Turkish Warplanes Target Kurdish Rebel Sites in N. Iraq

Washington Post

By Ellen Knickmeyer

Washington Post Foreign Service 

Friday, September 26, 2008; 10:36 AM

CAIRO, Sept. 26 -- Turkish warplanes crossed the border into northern Iraqi airspace to bomb 16 Kurdish rebel sites, a spokesman for Turkey's military said Friday. There were no reports of any deaths in the air attacks, which occurred late Thursday night.

The airstrikes targeted Kurdish rebel positions on Qandil mountain, at Iraq's border with Iran, Brig. Gen. Metin Gurak told reporters in Ankara, Turkey's capital.

Ahmed Deniz, a spokesman for Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, told wire services the airstrikes targeted areas that already were largely abandoned, owing to earlier attacks from neighboring Iran. The raids injured one rebel and two civilians, Deniz said.

Turkey has been battling Kurdish separatists in Turkey's east since 1984. Clashes Thursday inside Turkey killed six Kurdish rebels and one soldier, Gurak said.

Since last year, Turkey has sent warplanes and troops sporadically into northern Iraq to attack rebel bases there.