ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey carried out airstrikes targeting Kurdish militants in neighboring Iraq and Syria on Saturday, the Turkish Defense Ministry said. This comes a day after an attack on a Turkish military base in Iraq killed nine Turkish soldiers.
Turkey often launches strikes against targets in Syria and Iraq it believes to be affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a banned Kurdish separatist group that has waged insurgency against Turkey since the 1980s.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The defense ministry said that aircraft struck targets in Metina, Hakurk, Gara and Qandil in northern Iraq, but didn’t specify areas in Syria.
It said fighter jets destroyed caves, bunkers, shelters and oil facilities “to eliminate terrorist attacks against our people and security forces … and to ensure our border security.” The statement added “many” militants were “neutralized” in the strikes.
On Friday night, attackers attempted to infiltrate a military base in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, killing five soldiers.
He added that six people were arrested after police identified 110 social media accounts that “praised the separatist terrorist organization for provocative purposes” or had spread misleading information.
Faik Aydin was targeted in an operation run by Turkish intelligence agency MIT, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) inside the Turkey-Iraq frontier, Anadolu reported.
The PKK, which maintains bases in northern Iraq, is considered a terror organization by Turkey’s Western allies, including the United States.
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West has left another power vacuum in the middle east.