Turkish military jets carried out airstrikes against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters in northern Iraq and northeast Syria, killing at least 24 people, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu News said.
A statement released by Turkey’s air force said that it carried out the airstrikes against PKK targets located in the Sinjar Mountain region in northern Iraq and in Karachok mountains in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, Aljazeera reported.
The targets were hit to prevent PKK from sending “terrorists, arms, ammunition and explosives to Turkey”, the statement said, adding that the operation was conducted “within the scope of the international law”.
PKK are Kurdish fighters operating in Turkey, while the Rojava Defence Units (YPG) are Kurdish fighters operating in Northern Syria and the Peshmerga fighters are in charge of security in Iraqi Kurdistan. The three groups are currently fighting the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group. At least six people were killed, five from the Peshmerga and a sixth from Asayish (Rojava),” Lieutenant General Jabbar Yawar, secretary-general of the Peshmerga ministry in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish government, told AFP.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group that tracks the Syrian war, said that at least 18 YPG fighters were killed in the airstrikes in Syria’s Hasakah Province.
YPG in Northern Syria said on their Twitter account that Turkish warplanes targeted the headquarters of the General Command of the YPG in Mount Karachok near the city of Derik in Hasakah Province.
