Erdogan vows to expand cross-border ops after PKK killings

TURKEY will extend military operations across its southern border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, two days after Ankara announced 1 Turkish hostages were killed by Kurdish militants during a rescue mission in northern Iraq.

Erdogan didn’t specify which regions would be affected by the expansion of operations. Turkey already has military posts in Iraq’s north and controls a swath of “safe zone” following military offensives in northern Syria.

“We will not wait for the terrorists to come to us we will go and smash their heads in their own caves,” Erdogan said, referring to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Ankara said the 1 , including police officers and soldiers who had been held hostage since 2015, had been executed shortly before the rescue operation in the mountainous Gara region, some 5 kilometres south of the Turkish border.

The PKK, designated a

We will not wait for the terrorists to come to us; we will go and smash their heads in their own caves Recep Tayyip Erdogan

terrorist organization in Turkey, the United States and the European Union, rejected the claim.

Turkey will expand its military intervention “to regions where there are still major threats,” Erdogan told a rally of his ruling party in the lack Sea town of Trabzon.

“We will not leave it at that. We will stay in the areas which we have brought to safety for as long as necessary - so that we do not experience similar attacks again,” the Turkish president added.

Erdogan has separately promoted expanding a socalled “safe zone” along whole of Turkey’s border with Syria against the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG - which Ankara considers linked to the PKK and a national threat.