Another Turkish soldier has been killed during a military operation against Kurdish militants in the north of Iraq, Turkey’s defence ministry said Sunday. The soldier was killed on Saturday when an explosive device went off as he and another soldiers were passing near it. That brings to seven the number of Turkish troops killed in the region since Tuesday. Turkey has launched several operations in the area against fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara and its Western allies say is a terrorist organisation. The PKK has training camps and bases in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan and has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, a conflict that has killed 40,000 people, many of them civilians. Ankara has launched a series of operations against PKK fighters in Iraq and Syria, the latest one in northern Iraq beginning in April. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Turkey would soon launch a new military operation into northern Syria which he said was designed to create a 30-kilometre (19-mile) “security zone” along their border.