Turkey has escalated its drone attacks on alleged members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq, part of an ongoing offensive against the militants that has left at least seven civilians dead this week alone, local officials and media sources in Iraq say. 

Three civilians, one of them a child, were killed Thursday when a suspected Turkish drone targeted a vehicle in the village of Hermele, located in the Chwarta district, a local official told the Kurdish news outlet Roj News.

Chwarta district chief Osman Enwer said the attack occurred in the early afternoon and impacted a vehicle with a local license plate. “The attack was carried out by a Turkish drone, and three civilians were killed,” Enwer told Roj News. The child was ill and was being transported (ostensibly to or from a hospital), Enwer added. One of the victims could not be immediately identified because of the state of the remains.

A Turkish drone strike on Wednesday near the town of Dukan in Sulaimaniyah province killed a father and his two children, Kamran Osman, head of Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a US-based independent conflict monitor, said at a news conference the same day. Local resident Sirvan Sarhad said the children were aged 12 and 16.