Turkish operations set a village ablaze, locals say. Here is what to know.

Locals extinguished flames using donated equipment about seven hours after fires started Saturday morning, according to the nonprofit Shlama Foundation. (Cover photo/The Assyrian Villages of Nala via Facebook)

Yasmeen Altaji | July 9, 2023 | Updated July 10, 9:27 a.m CST

Turkish operations reportedly caused fires in parts of the village of Merki, located in the Nahla Valley in Iraq’s north, early Saturday morning, the latest evidence of civilian life in the region disrupted by continued cross-border conflict.

On Monday, some locals attributed the fires to a drone crash, but the cause remains unclear.

Akad Naboleoon Shmuel, a resident of the village of Hezanke in the Nahla Valley, was in Erbil when the fires broke out. He told The Word he was in touch with family who told him what had happened.

“In the morning, [locals] heard something fall down and determined that it was a drone that caused the fire,” he said.

Reports are unconfirmed, and it has not been determined whether the drone made strikes.

What happened

• At approximately 3:00 a.m. local time on Saturday, July 8, fires broke out following reported strikes on the area. Posts to a local Facebook page called “The Assyrian Villages of Nala” attributed fires to “attacks and aftermath” of airstrikes that day.

• “Despite reconnaissance planes and warplanes over the sky of Nahla…our children, young and old are still fighting the fire,” one post to the page said in Arabic.

• Villagers used donated equipment to extinguish flames themselves. Noor Matti, founder of the Erbil-based nonprofit Shlama Foundation, which donated the equipment in 2021, told The Word the valley lacks “government facilities”, namely adequate emergency response systems.

• By 10:00 a.m., locals had put out the fires completely. According to Matti, the process took about four hours.

Ongoing conflict

Turkey targets suspected positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist organization. The Nahla Valley, home to several Assyrian-populated villages, is located within Dohuk, one of the target of areas of Turkey’s ongoing Operation Claw-Lock, launched in April 2022. But the area was subject to attacks prior to the operation’s initiation—in 2021, parts of Nahla Valley burned for an extended period, destroying land and prompting the firefighting equipment donation drive by Shlama Foundation.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article was titled “Turkish airstrikes set a village ablaze, locals say. Here is what to know.” We’ve updated the title to reflect developments and subsequent updates to the story.