Turkey strikes Kurdish militants in northern Iraq

Turkey strikes Kurdish militants in northern Iraq
Turkey's military says it killed 13 members of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in air strikes in northern Iraq on Sunday.
2 min read
28 May, 2017
The warplanes struck seven PKK targets in the Avasin-Basyan region of northern Iraq [Getty]

Turkey said at leasy 13 members of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were killed in air strikes in northern Iraq on Monday.

The warplanes struck seven PKK targets in the Avasin-Basyan region of northern Iraq, killing militants believed to be preparing for an attack, the military said.

In a separate airstrike in Turkey's south-eastern province of Van late on Saturday, the military said warplanes had killed another ten Kurdish militants.

The PKK, which has camps in the mountains of northern Iraq, near the Turkish border, has been waging an armed campaign since 1994 that has left thousands of dead.

It is deemed a terrorist organisation by both Ankara and its Western allies.

A recent US decision to deliver weapons to the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG) has provoked anger in Turkey, which views it as the Syrian wing of the PKK.

Turkey fears that weapons delivered to Syrian fighters could end up in the hands of the PKK and be turned on Turkish targets.

But the US insists that the arms being delivered are carefully calibrated to the needs of an anticipated offensive against the main IS base in the Syrian town of Raqqa, and that they will keep tabs on all the weapons being deployed.

"Every single one of these weapons that are being provided to our partner force, we intend to account for them, and to ensure that they are pointed at ISIS," or the Islamic State, US Colonel John Dorrian, a military spokesperson for the anti-IS coalition in Baghdad, said earlier this month.

The dispute over how best to tackle IS in Syria has soured ties between the two NATO allies during the past year.