Sulaimaniyah, Iraq: Four fighters affiliated with Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed Friday in a Turkish drone strike in Iraq’s autonomous northern region, Kurdish officials said.
Turkish army drones targeted a “vehicle belonging to PKK fighters” in the city of Kalar, the anti-terrorist squad in Iraqi Kurdistan said in a statement. It killed “four people and wounded a fifth person”.
Earlier, medical and security officials said the unclaimed drone strike had killed three people, while a fourth had been seriously wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the drone strike on Kalar.
The attack comes two months after Turkey launched an air and ground offensive in northern Iraq targeting separatist PKK bases and training camps. Designated as a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, the PKK has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Following the Kalar drone attack, Without explicitly denying the drone strikes, Turkey’s defence ministry said it had neutralised “six PKK terrorists” in the area of its military operation. A ministry spokesman said “Kalar is much farther south” than that area.