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2 PKK Members Killed, 1 Injured in Turkish Attack in Sinjar

A member of the Iraqi security forces stands guard on the Iraqi side of Iraq-Syria border, January 27, 2022.REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily
A member of the Iraqi security forces stands guard on the Iraqi side of Iraq-Syria border, January 27, 2022.REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily
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2 PKK Members Killed, 1 Injured in Turkish Attack in Sinjar

A member of the Iraqi security forces stands guard on the Iraqi side of Iraq-Syria border, January 27, 2022.REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily
A member of the Iraqi security forces stands guard on the Iraqi side of Iraq-Syria border, January 27, 2022.REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily

Two members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were killed on Sunday and another was seriously injured in a Turkish attack on a car in Sinjar, west of Nineveh governorate in north Iraq.

The Counter-Terrorism Group in the Kurdistan Region reported that a Turkish drone targeted a car of PKK-linked elements, killing two militants and wounding another.

It said the attack took place in a mountainous area between the villages of Bara and Bahrava in the district of Sinjar.

Later, the Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed the killing of two PKK militants as part of operation claw-lock that Ankara launched in northern Iraq last April.

The statement said that northern Iraq and northern Syria will not be for terrorists and that the Turkish forces are determined to dry up terrorism at its source.

Türkiye launched the operation to target the PKK’s strongholds in Iraq's northern Metina, Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions, near the Turkish border.

Sinjar’s attack on Sunday comes two months after eight people were killed and 26 were injured by Turkish artillery fire on the hill village of Parakh in Zakho district.

In an unusually strong rebuke, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi warned Türkiye that Iraq reserves the "right to retaliate," calling the artillery fire a "flagrant violation" of sovereignty.

Turkish forces have perpetrated once more a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty," Kadhimi said on Twitter, condemning the harm caused to "the life and security of Iraqi citizens."

A Foreign Ministry statement signaled Ankara’s willingness to do anything to uncover the truth behind the incident.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) strongly condemned the deadly artillery shelling and said in a statement that civilians are once again suffering the indiscriminate effects of explosive weapons.

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Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)

The Trump administration has notified the World Food Program and other partners that it has terminated some of the last remaining lifesaving humanitarian programs across the Middle East, a US official and a UN official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The projects were being canceled “for the convenience of the US Government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whom the Trump administration appointed to oversee and finish dismantling the US Agency for International Development, according to letters sent to USAID partners and viewed by the AP.

About 60 letters canceling contracts were sent over the past week, including for major projects with the World Food Program, the world’s largest provider of food aid, a USAID official said. An official with the United Nations in the Middle East said the World Food Program received termination letters for US-funded programs in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Some of the last remaining US funding for key programs in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the southern African nation of Zimbabwe also was affected, including for those providing food, water, medical care and shelter for people displaced by war, the USAID official said.

The UN official said the groups that would be hit hardest include Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Also affected are programs supporting vulnerable Lebanese people and providing irrigation systems inside Syria, a country emerging from a brutal civil war and struggling with poverty and hunger.

In Yemen, another war-divided country that is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, the terminated aid apparently includes food that has already arrived in distribution centers, the UN official said.

Aid officials were just learning of many of the cuts Monday and said they were struggling to understand their scope.

Another of the notices, sent Friday, abruptly pulled US funding for a program with strong support in Congress that had sent young Afghan women overseas for schooling amid Taliban prohibitions on women’s education, said an administrator for that project, which is run by Texas A&M University.

The young women would now face return to Afghanistan, where their lives would be in danger, according to that administrator, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration had pledged to spare those most urgent, lifesaving programs in its cutting of aid and development programs through the State Department and USAID.

The Republican administration already has canceled thousands of USAID contracts as it dismantles USAID, which it accuses of wastefulness and of advancing liberal causes.

The newly terminated contracts were among about 900 surviving programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had notified Congress he intended to preserve, the USAID official said.

There was no immediate comment from the State Department.