Turkey has targeted more than 70 sites allegedly connected to Kurdish equipment in Syria and northern Iraq in airstrikes introduced this week in retaliation for the deaths of 12 Turkish infantrymen in Iraq, the defense minister said on Wednesday.
At least 59 Kurdish militants were killed in the movements and in ground clashes, Yasar Guler said in a video message addressed to senior army officers and 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. “
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, or PKK, attempted to infiltrate a Turkish base in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, Turkish officials said. Six Turkish soldiers were killed in the ensuing firefight. The following day, six more Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with the Kurdish militants.
Turkey responded by launching measures against sites the government said were linked to the PKK in Iraq and Syria.
A spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said at least eight civilians were killed in airstrikes in northeastern Syria on Monday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U. K. -based war observer, said another 12 people were wounded.
Turkey insists that it is taking the utmost care with 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 the 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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