Turkey launches attacks on Kurds

TURKEY has launched a new ground and air cross-border offensive against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, that has left at least 19 suspected Kurdish rebels dead and has wounded at least four Turkish soldiers, Turkey’s defence minister has said.

Turkish jets and artillery struck suspected targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and commando troops, supported by helicopters and drones, then crossed into the region by land or were airlifted by helicopters.

Defence minister Hulusi Akar said the jets successfully struck shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels, ammunition depots and headquarters belonging to the PKK. The group maintains bases in northern Iraq and has used the territory for attacks on Turkey.

At least 19 militants were killed while four Turkish troops were wounded during the offensive, the ministry said. There was no immediate comment from the Kurdish militant group on the incursion and the defence ministry statement could not be verified independently.

Turkey has conducted numerous cross-border aerial and ground operations against the PKK over the past decades. The latest offensive, named Operation Claw Lock, was centred in northern Iraq’s Metina, Zap and Avashin-Basyan regions.

There was no information on the number of troops and jets involved in the latest incursion.

“Our heroic commandoes and maroon berets, supported by attack helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, armed unmanned aerial vehicles, arrived on the scene by land and by air and captured the determined targets,” Akar said. “Many terrorists were neutralised.”

“At this point we have reached, all planned targets have been captured,” he said.

The defence ministry said the new offensive was launched after it was determined that the militants were regrouping for a “large-scale attack”.

The offensive was carried out in co-ordination with Turkey’s “friends and allies”, the ministry added, but did not elaborate.

Last week, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, which controls the areas that were attacked.

The Turkish minister said the incursion was targeting “terrorists” and that “maximum sensitivity” was being shown to avoid damage to civilians and cultural and religious structures.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK, which is designated a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union, began an insurgency in Turkey’s majority Kurdish south-east region in 1984.