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Massacre of nine Iraqi tourists blamed on Turkey sparks protests, diplomatic fallout

Turkey's shelling of a tourist resort in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Dahuk region leaves Iraqis mourning and angry.

President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq Nechirvan Barzani (R) pays tribute in front of a casket.
President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq Nechirvan Barzani (R) pays tribute in front of the casket of one of the victims killed a day earlier in a Kurdish hill village in an attack blamed on Turkey, before the bodies are flown to their cities from the airport in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's northern Kurdish autonomous region, on July 21, 2022. — SAFIN HAMED/AFP via Getty Images

Angry reactions to the deaths of nine Iraqi civilians in an artillery strike blamed on Turkey continued to spread across Iraq yesterday, as the bodies of the victims were flown to Baghdad where they were received by Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the country's prime minister. Kadhimi declared a national day of mourning, and the country’s Ministerial Council on National Security demanded that Turkey formally apologize and withdraw all of its forces from Iraq.

Iraq said it would be taking its case to the UN Security Council, even as Turkey denied involvement in the artillery attack on a tourist resort in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Dahuk region and called for a joint investigation. Victims included a 1-year-old girl and a newly married man who had traveled there with his bride for their honeymoon.

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