Senior PKK female commander Helin Halana killed in Turkish airstrike
Senior PKK female commander Helin Halana killed in Turkish airstrike on August 20, 2019. Photo: ANF/ROJ
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraqi Kurdistan,— The People’s Defense Forces HPG, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) said on Thursday that one of its senior commanders was killed in a Turkish airstrike.
Helin Halana, also known as Layla Karabash, was killed in an airstrike on Tuesday in Qandil in Iraqi Kurdistan Region, according to an HPG statement published by the PKK-affiliated Roj News on Thursday.
“Turkish warplanes bombarded…the Zape area on August 20, martyring Helin Helena,” read the group’s statement.
Helin Halana was born in 1986 in the Yalova province in northwestern Turkey. She joined the PKK in 2001.
On July 5, 2019, Diyar Gharib, a senior Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) official, was killed alongside two others in a Turkish airstrike on the Qandil Mountains on July 5, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) confirmed in a statement on July 7.
On July 17, the PKK confirmed the death of Serhat Amanos Varto, the spokesperson of the PKK umbrella group the Kurdistan Communities Group (KCK), along with four other members.
Twenty Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with PKK in Turkish Kurdistan in the southeast of the country, the military wing of PKK said on August 3, 2019.
The Turkish military routinely carries out airstrikes and artillery bombardments in Iraqi Kurdistan region against suspected PKK targets, but their frequency has increased since Ankara launched “Operation Claw” in May, as have civilian casualties.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | rudaw.net | Agencies
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