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Top Kurdish official killed in Turkey's Iraq operation

Top Kurdish official killed in Turkey's Iraq operation

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan

Senior official from Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was eliminated in a Turkish intelligence operation in Iraq. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the announcement on Sunday.

He accuses the PKK of using mountainous area in northern Iraq as springboard for insurgency against Turkey

Erdogan said Selman Bozkir was the PKK chief in Makhmur, a Kurdish refugee camp in northern Iraq.

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"We will not allow the gruesome separatist organisation to use Makhmur as an incubator for terrorism," Erdogan said on Twitter.

"We will continue to exterminate terrorism at its source," he added.

The presidency's communications director Fahrettin Altun warned that "all terrorists will end up like him."

Set up by the United Nations at the end of the 1990s to host Turkish Kurds, the Makhmur camp was hit Saturday by a Turkish drone strike that left three civilians dead, a Kurdish official from the camp told AFP.

Ankara regularly accuses the PKK of running the Makhmur camp, which is 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of the Turkish border.

Turkey regularly conducts cross-border operations and air raids on PKK rear bases in Iraq -- moves that have strained relations between the two neighbours -- launching its latest offensive in April.

(With inputs from agencies)