Turkish drone strike kills PKK target in northern Iraq: Kurdish security

A Turkish drone strike on Sunday (August 6) killed a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant and wounded another in northern Iraq, said officials in the autonomous Kurdistan region. Meanwhile, in a separate incident,unknown gunmen shot dead a Kurdish Peshmerga officer, reported Reuters.

Turkish drone strike

According to Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism services, the “Turkish army drone” hit a vehicle with two PKK fighters, in the town of Chamchamal, in Iraq’s northern province of Sulaimaniya. It added, “A PKK military official was killed, and another fighter was wounded.”

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This comes amid Turkey’s long-running campaign in Iraq against militants of the PKK, which Ankara and its allies in the West consider a terrorist group. Since 1984, the PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkey that has allegedlyclaimed tens of thousands of lives.

Meanwhile, Ankara has maintained dozens of military bases inside northern Iraq where it regularly launches operations against PKK fighters which has long been outside the direct control of the Baghdad government and has sent commandos to support its offensives.

However, Turkeyrarely comments on its strikes against the PKK bases. The alleged strikealso comes after four PKK fighters were killed in the same region in a drone strike which was also attributed to Turkey by Iraqi Kurdistan, on July 29.

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As per reports, Turkey has stepped up drone attacks in areas controlled by the Kurdish administration in Syria in recent weeks. At the time, a press release by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that the drone attack targeted a village in the Amuda region, “making martyrs of four fighters in a self-defence group”.

Another Kurdish official shot?

According to a report by Reuters, in a separate incident, unknown gunmen shot dead a Kurdish Peshmerga officer in his vehicle in Erbil on Sunday. It was described as a relatively rare attack in the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

Citing Iraqi Kurdish security sources, the report said that the incident was under investigation, without giving more details.

(With inputs from agencies)

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