PHOTO: Aftermath of Turkish airstrike in Iraqi Kurdistan on Saturday
Turkey’s Kurdish insurgency PKK is being blamed for a suicide bomb on Sunday, killing two soldiers and wounding 24.
The official Anatolia News Agency said the attack was carried out against a local military headquarters in Agri Province in eastern Turkey.
Violence between the PKK and Turkish forces has spiraled in the last two weeks, threatening to end a peace process begun in late 2013.
Following the PKK’s killing of two Turkish policemen on July 22, Ankara launched a series of airstrikes on PKK camps in northern Iraq. Turkish news agencies say about 260 fighters have been killed.
More Turkish raids were reported early Saturday, east of the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Erbil. At least six people were killed and several more wounded in the town of Zarkel, local officials said, while an Iraq-based PKK activist said at least six homes were destroyed and eight civilians were killed.
Claimed footage of the airstrike:
Iraqi Kurdish President Massoud Barzani called on Turkey to halt the bombardment, while urging the PKK to keep fighters away from the civilian areas.
In Ankara, the group overseeing the Kurdish peace process warned on Saturday that it was near collapse. The committee said “various developments, mutual shortcomings and mistakes, mistrust, and new dynamics included in the process have spoiled the climate”:
Unfortunately, at this stage, the solution process is going through a fatal breakdown. The curtain of weapons and violence has been re-opened and a war is at our door again.