Turkey hits Kurdish targets in Iraq and Syria after 9 soldiers were killed
Turkey launched Operation Claw-Lock in northern Iraq in April 2022, during which it established several bases in Duhok Governorate. Baghdad has repeatedly protested the presence of Turkish troops and called for their withdrawal.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan expressed his condolences for the deaths of the Turkish soldiers on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“We will fight to the end against the PKK terrorist organisation within and outside our borders,” he wrote.
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Meanwhile, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced police had detained 113 people suspected of ties to the PKK following raids across 32 Turkish provinces.
He added that four people were arrested after police identified 60 social media accounts that “praised the separatist terrorist organisation for provocative purposes” or had spread misleading information.
Three weeks ago, PKK-affiliated militants tried to break into a Turkish base in northern Iraq, according to Turkish officials, leaving six soldiers dead. The following day, six more Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes.
Turkey retaliated by launching strikes against sites that officials said were associated with the PKK in Iraq and Syria. Defence Minister Yasar Guler said at the time that dozens of Kurdish militants were killed in air strikes and land assaults.
It was not immediately clear if Friday night’s attack and the one three weeks earlier targeted the same base. The Rudaw news website, based in Arbil in northern Iraq, reported that the base attacked on Friday was located on Mount Zap in Amedi district, which lies 17 kilometres (10 miles) from the Turkish border.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu said a senior PKK militant was “neutralised” in Iraq. Faik Aydin was targeted in an operation run by the Turkish intelligence agency, or MIT, some 160 kilometres (100 miles) inside the Turkey-Iraq frontier, Anadolu reported.
The PKK, which maintains bases in northern Iraq, is considered a terror organisation by Turkey’s Western allies, including the United States. Tens of thousands of people have died since the start of the conflict in 1984.