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Turkish warplanes strike PKK targets in northern Iraq - military
A Turkish F-16 fighter jet takes off from Incirlik airbase in the southern city of Adana, Turkey, July 27, 2015. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Murad Sezer
24/03/2016
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes hit and destroyed nearly a dozen targets belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq late on Wednesday, the armed forces said, the latest operations targeting insurgent camps near the Turkish border.
The F-16 and F-4 jets carried out the operation against the camps in the Hakkurk, Haftanin, Avasin and Basyan areas at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT), destroying 11 targets including ammunition depots and shelters, the military said on Thursday.
On Tuesday, warplanes struck shelters, caves and ammunition depots used by the PKK in northern Iraq and rural areas near the southeastern Turkish town of Semdinli. Clashes elsewhere in the southeast killed 26 militants on Tuesday.
The military says more than a thousand insurgents have been killed in the largely Kurdish southeast since the 2-1/2-year PKK ceasefire collapsed in July, prompting the heaviest clashes in the region since the 1990s.
President Tayyip Erdogan has said that more than 300 members of the security forces have died, while the pro-Kurdish opposition says hundreds of civilians have also been killed.
Separately, the military said one soldier was killed and four injured after a homemade bomb was detonated by remote control in the town of Nusaybin in the southeastern province of Mardin.
Nusaybin, near the Syrian border, has been under a curfew since March 14 when security forces launched operations against militants there.
(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Daren Butler and David Dolan; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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