PHOTO: PKK fighters in northern Iraq
Turkish warplanes bombed positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) overnight after insurgents killed up to 16 soldiers on Sunday.
The PKK’s assault on a military convoy in the mountainous Dağlıca area of Hakkari Province, in southeast Turkey near the Iraqi border, was the deadliest attack since the collapse of a 19-month ceasefire in late July.
“Two of our armoured vehicles suffered heavy damage after the detonation of hand-made explosives on the road. As a result of the blast, there were martyrs and wounded among our heroic armed comrades,” the military said in a statement.
The military said the convoys was removing mines on the road when the PKK detonated other explosives and then opened fire.
An emergency security meeting was called in Ankaral with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu leaving an international football match between Turkey and The Netherlands to attend. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan condemned the attack and said in an interview late Sunday that the fight against the PKK “would now become more determined”. He claimed 2,000 PKK fighters had been killed since the conflict resumed.
The Turkish military later said that “two F-4s and two F-16s carried out strikes in retaliation against 13 targets controlled by the militants suspected to have carried out the attack”.
Ankara’s warplanes began attacks on the PKK’s camps in northern Iraq in July, days after the Kurdish insurgents killed two policemen — accusing them of links to the Islamic State — and attacked troops.
Erdoğan had launched a “peace process” with detained PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in late 2012, hoping to end 30 years of conflict which has killed more than 40,000 people.
It did not give a death toll.
