Senior PKK militant commander killed in northeastern Syria: Report

A senior commander of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group has reportedly been killed in a bomb attack on his car near a northeastern Syrian city on the border with Turkey.

Spokesman for the Syrian opposition brigade Tell Hamis, Khalid al-Hasekavi, told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency on Saturday that Fehman Huseyin was killed when a bomb explosion hit his car as he was travelling from the town of Hime to al-Qamishli.

Hasekavi added seven other people, including Huseyin’s bodyguards, were killed in the bombing.

However, an unnamed spokesman for the People’s Defense Forces (HPG), the military wing of the PKK, denied the report.

Huseyin was born in 1969 in Syria and studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Damascus University. He joined the PKK in early 90s, and used Bahoz Erdal as his codename within the Kurdish militant group.

He served as the head of the People’s Defense Forces from June 2004 until July 2009, and was wanted for a number of alleged attacks on Turkish military forces in southeastern Turkey.

Huseyin had been part of the three-man PKK Executive Committee, including acting PKK leader Murat Karayilan and PKK co-founder Cemil Bayik.

A shaky ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015, and attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.

Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the past few months. The Turkish military has also been conducting offensives against PKK positions in northern Iraq and Syria.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting the Turkish military operations.

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