Seven Assyrian Villages in Northern Iraq Hit by Turkish Air Strikes

Seven Assyrian Villages in Northern Iraq Hit by Turkish Air Strikes
By Dan Wooding, Founder of the ASSIST News Service
NORTHERN IRAQ (ANS – August 12, 2015) -- The German public TV channel ARD reported yesterday (Tuesday, August 11, 2015) that Assyrian villages in the Qandil mountains were hit by the recent Turkish air strikes against the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
According to the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org), the villages hit by air strikes were Sharanish, Baz, Barwary Bala, Hayes, Dawoodiya and Margerija.
One Assyrian village the German reporter visited is Sharanish, located in the district of Zahko, near the Turkish border. Sharanish has hosted 60 Assyrian families from the Nineveh Plain who were driven out by Islamic State, also known as ISIS, in August of 2014. Among the displaced Assyrians are many from the Assyrian city of Baghdede.
A displaced Assyrian said in the interview “the airplanes are over our heads. They bomb the area and we do not know where we can escape to.”
AINA went on to say that in Dawoodiya there is a refugee camp with 700 families. The majority of the refugees are Yezidis from Shengal, but about 20% of them are Assyrians from the Nineveh Plain and Mosul.
There were no injuries or fatalities caused by the air strikes, but there was extensive property damage.
An Assyrian resident told AINA the PKK should not place its camps and warehouses so close to villages, as this endangers the residents.
Photo caption: 1) Christians reclaim the Iraq village of Bakufa from Islamic State. 2) Dan Wooding pictured outside the Kurdistan Parliament in Erbil, Northern Iraq.
About the writer: Dan Wooding, 74, is an award-winning author, broadcaster and journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, and is now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 52 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He has written some 45 books. Dan also hosts three TV programs, His Channel Live on www.hischannel.com,  Inside Hollywood with Dan Wooding, a 13-part series which is still be worked on with Tim Hathaway, and “Windows on the World with Dan Wooding and Pam Christian”, which began airing on Wednesday, August 12, on www.hsbn.tv . He also hosts the weekly Front Page Radio show on the KWVE Radio Network (www.kwve.com), which is also broadcast on several other stations in the US, UK and Belize.
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