TURKEY has been accused of war crimes after five people were killed in a drone strike in northern Iraq on Sunday evening as Ankara’s 18-month long war continues. 

Their vehicle was struck in what appears to be a targeted attack in the Tigris region, west of the city of Mosul. 

Five men and a woman were killed and another two people were reported to have been injured. 

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s counterterrorrism unit claimed that those killed were Kurdistan Workers Parry (PKK) guerillas. 

Nineveh province governor Najm al-Jubouri strongly condemned the drone strike, saying that it destabilised the region, which is rebuilding after shaking off the control of the Isis jihadist movement. 

“This attack dangerously jeopardises Nineveh's citizens, and we ask the Iraqi government to protest against such acts by the Turkish government,” he said. 

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry is already investigating a Turkish drone strike that killed several people last month and has warned that appropriate measures will be taken. 

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that Turkey’s continued use of unmanned aerial vehicles was “a threat to the security of ordinary people, several of whom lost their lives and sustained injuries as a result of the attack.

“This attack undermines the security of Iraq and stability of its people and requires a unified stance to be confronted,” the statement continued.

The ministry promised to take the “necessary steps after completion of a thorough investigation into the attack.”

Turkey launched Operation Claw Lock in April, widening its military operations in Iraqi Kurdistan, where there have been daily bombings since April last year. 

Ankara’s forces stand accused of a series of war crimes, including the bombing of a United Nations-administered refugee camp, a Yazidi hospital in Shengal and a number of targeted executions using drone strikes. 

Evidence of chemical weapons use continues to be ignored by world bodies, with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons refusing to send a fact-finding mission to the region. 

The Morning Star remains the only Western media outlet to have visited the region and spoken to victims, medics and national and regional politicians. 

Sunday’s attack took place days after a drone strike on a base belonging to the Protection Force of Ezidxan in the Yazidi-populated Shengal district, in which six people were killed, and a 12-year child was killed by a Turkish drone that hit a marketplace in the Snune district of Shengal on Saturday, according to local reports.