Turkey says it has ‘neutralized’ 43 Kurdish PKK militants in Iraqi Kurdistan
ISTANBUL,— Turkey’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday a total of 43 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had been “neutralized” as part of an operation Ankara launched in Iraqi Kurdistan region 13 days ago.
The Turkish military launched what it dubbed “Operation Claw” in northern Iraq’s Hakurk region on June 27 with artillery and air strikes followed by operations by commando brigades.
The PKK militant group is based in Iraqi Kurdistan, notably in the Qandil region to the south of Hakurk. Ankara said the operation aimed to destroy shelters and caves used by the PKK and “neutralize” its members – a term it commonly uses to refer to deaths, but also to those wounded or captured.
“43 PKK terrorists have been neutralized as part of Operation Claw, which has continued successfully for 13 days in the Hakurk region of northern Iraq,” the ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
It said 53 mines and improvised explosive devices had been destroyed and 74 caves and shelters used by the PKK made unusable, adding that it had also seized weapons and ammunition belonging to the militants.
On Friday the Gerilla TV which belong to the People’s Defense Forces (HPG), the military wing of the PKK, has released footage from an action against Turkish military in the Barzan region of Iraqi Kurdistan on May 14, 2019. The PKK statement said “4 Turkish soldiers were killed in the action and 1 was injured. Our forces [PKK] confiscated a MPT-76 rifle from the bodies.”
Turkey has recently increased the frequency of it strikes on targets in Iraqi Kurdistan, which it says are part of an effort to combat the PKK.
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 | Reuters
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