News / Turkey

Top PKK terrorist killed in Turkish airstrikes in northern Iraq

Sunday, 15 April 2018 3:00 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 15 April 2018 4:47 PM ]

Slain PKK terrorist Birdal Burhanli, better known by the nom de guerre Agiri Mazlum Pirdogan (Photo by Anadolu news agency)

The Turkish military says a high-profile member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group has been killed in a series of airstrikes carried out in Iraq's northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region late last month.

The Turkish General Staff, in a statement released on Sunday, announced that Turkish fighter jets bombarded Hakurk-Kani Rash region on March 21, killing Birdal Burhanli, better known by the nom de guerre Agiri Mazlum Pirdogan, in the process.

The statement added that Pirdogan was on the Turkish Interior Ministry’s list of wanted terrorists.

Last December, the governor’s office of Turkey’s eastern province of Tunceli stated that senior PKK terrorist Murat Dag, better known by the nom de guerre Ferhat Yilmaz, had been killed along with seven other terrorists during an offensive in the Pulumur district of the province, situated some 800 kilometers (497 miles) east of the capital Ankara.

Slain PKK terrorist Murat Dag, better known by the nom de guerre Ferhat Yilmaz (Photo by Anadolu news agency)

On November 14 last year, Turkey’s Interior Ministry announced that Hülya Eroğlu, better known by the nom de guerre Gülbahar, had been killed during an offensive in the Bestler-Dereler district of the province, situated some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) east of the capital Ankara.

Eroğlu was a member of the so-called PKK executive committee, and on the red category of the terror blacklist.

PKK militants regularly clash with Turkish forces in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkey attached to northern Iraq.

Turkey, along with the European Union and the United States, has declared the PKK a terrorist group and has banned it. The militant group has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984.

In this file photo, a group of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants enter northern Iraq in the Heror area, northeast of Dahuk, located 430 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. (Photo by AP)

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

Over the past few months, Turkish ground and air forces have been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country as well as in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria.

More than 40,000 people have been killed during the three-decade conflict between Turkey and the autonomy-seeking militant group.

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