A pro-Kurdish party in Turkey says the country’s army has killed 10 civilians, including women and children, in an airstrike against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq, a claim denied by Ankara.
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Turkish strikes against the PKK in northern Iraq killed at least six people on Saturday, officials said, as Ankara’s bombardment of the Kurdish rebel group entered its second week.
Kurdish militias carried out a suicide attack on a Turkish military police station in eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing two soldiers and wounding 24 others, the local authorities said. The US has welcomed Turkey’s apparent jettisoning of its reluctance to act against IS, critics having accused Ankara of turning a blind eye to the dreaded terrorist group’s using Turkish soil to transition to Syria.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency has claimed that some 260 rebels were killed in the air raids against PKK targets in northern Iraq.
In the Catak district of the Van region in the east of Turkey, two suspected PKK members were killed overnight when they tried to attack the local police headquarters, Anatolia said.
But Toner’s comments came just a day after the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that any air support missions for the YPG were not included in the US-Turkey deal.
PKK militants who took part in the operation also launched ambushes on the roads to prevent medical teams reaching the scene before fleeing in the direction of Mount Ararat, it added.
A truce that has helped bring social and economic stability to Turkey evaporated only one week into the government’s new offensive against the militant Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which stretches from southeastern Turkey to northern Iraq. “The peace process between Turks and Kurds’ being threatened is not only related to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but also to hardliners in the PKK who do not want peace”, Barzani said in an interview with reporters from Germany-based Focus magazine on July 31.
On Thursday, the pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper reported 30 warplanes attacked PKK camps “in Zap, Metina, and Haftanin regions in northern Iraq where the members of the terorrist organization are densely populated”.
Quite a few observers were caught unaware by these developments, especially when it had earlier seemed like the US had failed to coax Turkey into a conventional intervention in Syria during the highly publicized siege of Ayn al-Arab.
“We will stop this fascist approach”, he said.
The statement also stressed the council’s “commitment not to allow any attack on Turkey from Iraqi territory”.
The peace progress entailed giving Turkey’s own Kurdish population more cultural rights with the prospect, over time, of greater autonomy in the southeastern regions where they constitute a majority.
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Turkey points to the brutality of Assad’s government in repressing opposition and igniting a civil war that has left almost a quarter of a million dead. It has also targeted positions held by the Islamic State group.
