A senior official from Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was killed in a Turkish intelligence operation in Iraq, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday.
Erdogan accuses the PKK of using the mountainous area in Iraq's north as a springboard for its insurgency against the Turkish state.
The Turkish president said Selman Bozkir, also known as Doctor Huseyin, was the PKK chief in Makhmur, a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq.
"We will not allow the gruesome separatist organisation to use Makhmur as an incubator for terrorism," Erdogan said on Twitter.
"We will continue to exterminate terrorism at its source," he added.
The presidency's communications director Fahrettin Altun warned that "all terrorists will end up like him."
Set up by the United Nations at the end of the 1990s to host Turkish Kurds, the Makhmur camp was hit Saturday by a Turkish drone strike that left three civilians dead, a Kurdish official from the camp told AFP.
Ankara regularly accuses the PKK of running the Makhmur camp, which is 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of the Turkish border.
Turkey regularly conducts cross-border operations and air raids on PKK rear bases in Iraq -- moves that have strained relations between the two neighbours -- launching its latest offensive in April.
Earlier this week Erdogan likened Makhmur camp to the Mount Qandil region along Iraq's eastern frontier, where the PKK has bases.
"If the United Nations does not clean up this district, we will take care of it in our capacity as a UN member state," Erdogan warned.
Turkish troops have maintained a network of bases in northern Iraq since the mid-1990s on the basis of security agreements struck with the government of late dictator Saddam Hussein.
The PKK has waged a rebellion in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey since 1984 that has claimed more than 40,000 lives, and uses bases in Iraq to train fighters and launch attacks on Turkey.
Related Links
News From Across The Stans
| Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution. |
||
| SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal |
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only |
|
'Uyghur Tribunal' to convene over abuses as China fumes
London (AFP) June 4, 2021
A panel of UK-based lawyers and rights experts investigating the plight of Uyghurs in China will begin hearing evidence from witnesses on Friday, as Beijing branded it a "machine producing lies". The "Uyghur Tribunal" says its nine jurors will hear first-hand testimony of alleged crimes in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, including forced sterilisation, torture, disappearances and slave labour. The organisation, which has no state backing, plans to use the London hearings to issue a ... read more