Turkey Kills 4 PKK Militants in North Iraq: Sources
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Turkish armed forces shelled a Kurdish militant target in northern Iraq Tuesday and killed four militants, military sources said.
The Turkish army regularly conducts cross-border air operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq's mountainous north, where the militants are based.
The sources said unmanned aerial vehicles determined the shelling also wounded a fifth PKK fighter and destroyed weapon depots in an area across from Turkey's Sirnak province, which borders the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, Reuters reported.
Iraqi Kurdish authorities, as well as central government officials in Baghdad, have slammed Turkey for such cross-border activities against the PKK in the past, saying it violates the country's territorial sovereignty.
Turkish military forces have been conducting ground operations as well as airstrikes against PKK positions in Turkey’s troubled southeastern border region and Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region over the past year.
The campaign began following the July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, which claimed more than 30 civilian lives. Turkish officials held the Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) Takfiri terrorist group responsible for the act of terror.
PKK militants, who accuse the Ankara government of supporting Daesh, launched a string of supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish security forces after the bomb attack, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.
A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants following the Turkish strikes against the group.
More than 600 Turkish security forces and over 7,000 PKK militants have been killed since the collapse of the truce, according to the latest toll provided by Anadolu in July.
