ANKARA: Turkish fighter jets have conducted airstrikes on suspected Kurdish militant hideouts in northern Iraq after a suicide attack on a government building in Ankara, the Turkish defense ministry announced on Sunday.
20 targets of PKK destroyed
The ministry said that about 20 targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, were destroyed in the airstrikes, including caves, shelters, and depots.
Earlier on Sunday, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an entrance of the Interior Ministry, injuring two police officers.
The PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack. Turkiye’s Interior Ministry also identified one of the attackers as a member of the banned group. It said efforts were still underway to determine the identity of the second attacker.
The attack occurred hours before Turkiye’s Parliament reopened after its three-month summer break with an address by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
President Erdogan, addressing the parliament after the incident, stated that “terrorists” would never succeed in their objectives. He emphasized, “The malefactors threatening citizens’ peace and security have not achieved their goals and will never attain them.
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According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, the attack took place when two attackers came in a commercial vehicle at around 9:30 a.m. near the entry gate of the General Directorate of Security of the Ministry of the Interior. One attacker blew himself up while the other was fatally shot in the head before he could trigger his weapon. Two police officers had minor injuries in the incident.
Police found, hand grenades, plastic explosives and a rocket launcher from the scene, a ministry statement said.
After the incident, Ankara police headquarters in a statement on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) said that they were conducting controlled explosions of suspicious packages to stop more explosions.
The Ankara prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the incident, imposing restrictions on access to the area. Local media outlets were also directed to refrain from showing images from the attack site as the investigation unfolds.
