Turkey staged new artillery strikes against Kurdish separatist positions in northern Iraq, the defense ministry and Iraqi sources said Saturday. While President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this month said operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq were coming to an end, a security source in northern Iraq said the latest overnight shelling was “intense.”
“In line with our right to self-defense… air operations were carried out against terrorist targets in northern Iraq, in the Gara, Qandil, and Asos regions,” Turkey’s defense ministry said in a statement. The Turkish army named 25 targets including PKK “caves, bunkers, shelters, stores, and installations.” Turkey and most of its western allies consider the PKK to be a terrorist group. It has been fighting the Turkish state since 1984.
Kamran Othman, a member of the Community Peacemakers Teams (CPT) group working in Iraqi Kurdistan, said the attacks lasted about 45 minutes and there were no civilian victims of the shelling. The Turkish army said it had “neutralized several terrorists.”
CPT says it has recorded more than 230 artillery shelling incidents since June 15, some of which have started fires on agricultural land and hit civilians. Turkey says it wants to establish a security zone in northern Iraq and Syria to prevent militant incursions.
