Turkish air raids, army operations kill 27 separatist militants: Military
The Turkish military says it has killed 27 members of a separatist Kurdish group during a series of air and ground operations in the country's mainly-Kurdish southeast.
In a statement released on Sunday, the Turkish army said airstrikes in the Semdinli district of Turkey’s Hakkari Province left 20 members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) dead on Friday.
The military said it also killed at least seven PKK militants in a series of fierce clashes across the same troubled area on Saturday.
The statement added that Turkish warplanes also pounded PKK positions in Turkey’s Dyarbakir Province as well as in the Gara area of northern Iraq on Saturday. There was no word on the death toll from those airstrikes.
However, the state-run Anadolu Agency cited security sources as saying that a small number of PKK militants were killed in those strikes.
Meanwhile, local authorities said that two Turkish troopers were wounded when their military vehicle came under gunfire in northeast Turkey’s Gumushane Province. Media reports indicated that one of the soldiers subsequently died of his injuries.
The Turkish military has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the past few months. Ankara has been conducting offensives against the positions of the militant group in northern Iraq as well.
Turkish forces launched the operations in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern town of Suruc. Over 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.
After the bombing, the PKK, which accuses the Ankara government of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.
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