The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Interior and the Iraqi Ministry of Interior in a joint press conference on July 1 in Baghdad said that three people with links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were arrested for their direct involvement in a series of incidents of arson in Iraq. 

Two of the suspects were members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) counter-terrorism group (CTG) and peshmerga Unit 70.

Iraqi Ministry of Interior spokesperson Miqdad Miri told reporters that the suspects belonged to the PKK, the PUK’s peshmerga Unit 70, and the CTG, and announced that they were behind the recent fires that had broken out in the markets of Kirkuk and other areas of the Kurdistan Region.

“The suspects confessed to the crimes and said that they planned to attack several other places in Baghdad and Iraq in the near future, as well as in neighboring countries,” Miri said.

Moreover, he said they were planning to blow up the Iraq-Turkiye Pipeline that delivers oil from Iraq to its northern neighbor.

"In late 2023 and early 2024, fires broke out in Kirkuk, at a national market in Duhok, and then in Erbil. There were indications of a network of perpetrators behind these incidents," Miri said.

Director General of Diwan at the KRG Ministry of Interior Hemin Mirany told a news conference that the aim of the fires was to “hit the people’s economy” and that the suspects confessed that the PKK was behind these incidents.

“One of the suspects, Hunar Fakhreddin Ahmad, was an employee of peshmerga Unit 70, while the other was Mohammed Najat Hassan, an officer in the Sulaymaniyah CTG. Both were trained by the PKK.”

“PKK security and military cadres came from Syria, Turkiye, and Qandil, and were trained in Kifri, Sulaymaniyah, and Sangasar to carry out these terrorist acts,” Mirany said.