A TURKISH strike in northern Iraq killed three Yazidi militiamen and wounded three others today, regional officials said. 

A local official affiliated with the militia disputed that account, saying none of its fighters were killed, but that a shepherd died in the Turkish drone strike.

According to the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdish regional government, the early morning strike in the district of Sinjar targeted the headquarters of the Shingal Resistance Units (YBS) in the village of Chumu-Khalaf.

An official with the central government in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the strike had targeted a meeting of high-ranking YBS officials.

Naif Shemo, head of the Sinjar Yazidi council, said that the area targeted by Turkish drones was an abandoned Yazidi village where most of the houses had been previously destroyed by the militant Islamic State group.

The YBS, made up of mostly minority Yazidis, was instrumental in driving out Islamic State militants from Sinjar after the collapse of the Iraqi army and withdrawal of the semi-autonomous Kurdish forces in 2014. 

The IS militants’s takeover of Sinjar killed and captured about 10,000 Yazidis in attacks that the United Nations classified as genocide.

Tuesday’s attack was the second such strike in just over a week. A similar strike earlier this month killed three Yazidi militia, the Iraqi-Kurdish authorities said, though a local official affiliated with the YBS denied any deaths.

The Turkish Defence Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. 

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said today that the Turkish military had “neutralised 126 terrorists” in the past month, according to Turkey’s state-owned broadcaster TRT.

The group has been a frequent target of Turkish attacks in recent years for its ties to the insurgent Kurdistan Workers Party, a separatist movement banned in Turkey.