BAGHDAD: Turkish air strikes in northern Iraq targeting a group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) killed five people on Friday, local media reported.
These strikes followed a report from a Syrian war monitor indicating that Turkish drone strikes had killed 27 civilians in Syria during a 24-hour military escalation, which began after an attack on Wednesday at state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) near Ankara that Turkiye claimed killed five people.
In response to the Ankara attack, Turkiye’s defense ministry announced operations against PKK-related sites in both Iraq and Syria.
“A series of Turkish air strikes targeted the Sinjar Resistance Units,” a security official told AFP, confirming the five fatalities. The PKK had claimed responsibility for the Ankara attack. The official, speaking anonymously, was not authorized to speak to the media.
Another official in Sinjar, also under similar conditions, reported the same casualty figures from the “Turkish aerial bombardments targeting positions of the Sinjar Resistance Units.”
In contrast, Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region’s anti-terrorist service reported a lower toll of “three fighters killed” in Sinjar, noting that the strikes targeted PKK positions.
Turkiye frequently conducts ground and air offensives against the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, operating in northern Iraq, the autonomous Kurdistan region, and the mountains of Sinjar. Over the past 25 years, Turkiye has established several dozen military bases in northern Iraq as part of its campaign against the PKK.
