An Iraqi Kurdish official announced that members of the opposition Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed a peshmerga fighter in Iraqi Kurdistan Wednesday, which the region considered an attack on all the people of Kurdistan, amid fears of an unprecedented escalation.

"The peshmerga forces tried to prevent the movement of PKK fighters in the Dohuk governorate and were immediately attacked," the official, who declined to be named, told AFP.

Local police sources reported that a Peshmerga was killed and two others were wounded.

Immediately, Erbil condemned the attack.

The regional government said in a statement that "the Peshmerga forces are responsible for protecting the land of Kurdistan and its people, and therefore any attack of this kind is an attack on all the people of Kurdistan."

She added, "Today's PKK attack has crossed the red line (....) and the Kurdistan Regional Government will work to prevent any deterioration of the security situation in the region."

The Erbil authorities accused the PKK of being behind the targeting of an oil pipeline linking the autonomous region to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, last week.

The historical Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani accused the PKK militants of exploiting the preoccupation of the Peshmerga in fighting Daesh from 2014 to 2017 "to control areas in which he imposed himself as an alternative to the government."

The PKK, which refuses to recognize the Iraqi Kurdish government and campaigns for a united Kurdistan that stretches across Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, is an enemy of Ankara just as it is an opponent of the Irbil authorities.

Turkey considers it a "terrorist" organization, as is the case for the United States and the European Union.

As for Erbil, the PKK has nearly imposed the presence of its trained armed fighters in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq since the issuance of the autonomy decree in 1991.

The PKK, which presents itself as a harbinger of the Kurdish issue in the Middle East, is in fact a competitor to the authorities of Iraqi Kurdistan, the only Kurdish entity that has achieved autonomy for its five million inhabitants, unlike the Kurds of Syria, Turkey or Iran.

In mid-June, Ankara launched a new military operation in Iraqi Kurdistan, in which at least five civilians were killed, while Turkey announced the killing of two of its soldiers, and the PKK indicated that ten of its fighters and supporters were killed.