ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey struck more than 70 sites suspected of being connected to Kurdish outfits in Syria and northern Iraq in airstrikes introduced this week in retaliation for the deaths of 12 Turkish infantrymen in Iraq, the minister said Wednesday. defense.
At least 59 Kurdish militants were killed in the movements and in ground clashes, Yasar Guler said in a video message to senior army officers posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“Our grief is great, but our determination is total,” Guler said. “We have avenged (the deaths) of our precious young men and we will continue to do so. “
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There was no immediately statement from Kurdish groups and the 59 deaths could not be independently verified.
On Friday, militants affiliated with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) attempted to infiltrate a Turkish base in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, Turkish officials said. Six Turks were killed in the resulting firefight. The next day, six more Turks were killed in clashes with Kurdish militants.
Turkey responded by launching strikes against sites that officials said were associated with the PKK in Iraq and Syria.
A spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said at least eight civilians were killed in the airstrikes in northeast Syria on Monday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based war monitor, said 12 others were wounded.
Turkey insists that it is paying great attention to civilian casualties and damage to cultural heritage.
The PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq, has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is a terrorist organization through Turkey’s Western allies, including the United States. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since fighting began in 1984.
Turkey and the United States, however, are at odds over the situation of the Syrian Kurdish organizations, Washington’s allies in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.
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