Turkish bombs burn large tracts of Iraqi forest

More than 125 hectares (300 acres) of forest in northern Iraq have been burnt in the past month due to Turkish bombardment, a senior official in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan said on Sunday. The official told AFP that an emergency team of firemen and border and forest guards had been formed to extinguish the fires in the Kurdish province of Dohuk. "More than 500 dhonam (125 hectares, 1.25 square kilometres) of forest was burned as a result of Turkish bombardment this month," said Najat Sufi Hariri, the planning director in Kurdistan's agriculture ministry. "The population in the area are helping the (emergency) team extinguish the fires. The last fire was extinguished a couple of days ago." Since 1992 when the Kurdistan Regional Government for northern Iraq was formed, the cutting of trees and the killing of wildlife essential to the local ecosystem have been banned. But aided by US intelligence, Turkish jets have been bombing hideouts of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq since December 2007 under a Turkish parliamentary authorisation, which expires in October. The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives. The militants have long taken refuge in remote mountainous bases in northern Iraq, which they use as a springboard for attacks on Turkish targets across the border. Last November, Iraq, Turkey and the United States formed a joint committee to curb the PKK threat.