Turkish jets strike Kurdish militant posts in Iraq, Syria
Qatar Tribune
dpa Istanbul Turkish warplanes hit Kurdish militant targets in Iraq and northern Syria, including shelters, ammunition depots and training camps, the cou...
dpa Istanbul Turkish warplanes hit Kurdish militant targets in Iraq and northern Syria, including shelters, ammunition depots and training camps, the countryâs Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.Around 60 aircraft joined the overnight raid to target nearly 80 posts in three different locations in northern Syria and Iraq, as far as 165 kilometres from the Turkish border, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu cited the Defence Ministry as saying.The jets targeted âterroristâ posts belonging to the banned Kurdistan Workersâ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Kurdish militia, the Peopleâs Defence Units (YPG), in the areas of Derik, Sinjar and Karacak, the ministry said in a statement.Ankara considers both the PKK and YPG terrorist groups.âLast night, we bombed targets at three separate locations ... they could not find a place to hide,â President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Ankara.Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar separately warned similar raids will continue.A least four people were killed when Turkish drones hit a power station near Derik, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said.There is a Kurdish militant post near the power station, the group said.The death toll is likely to rise as there are wounded, some of whom are in critical condition, while the raid caused a power cut in some of the surrounding villages, the observatory added.The Kurdish-led US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) confirmed in a statement that four of its fighters who were in charge of protecting the station were killed and five civilian workers were wounded. The observatory also said Turkish forces stationed on the border strip with Syria had targeted civilian houses with heavy machine guns and artillery in Ain Dewar village in rural Derik.The bombardment has sparked a mass civilian exodus from the area, it added.Meanwhile, in northern Syria, a rocket attack on a market in a city controlled by Turkey-backed rebels on Wednesday killed at least eight people, including five civilians, the observatory said.The attack in the city of al-Bab in the countryside of Aleppo in northern Syria left at least 29 others injured, the war monitor said It is not clear yet who was behind the attack, which came from an area manned by a Kurdish militia and next to which Syrian government forces are stationed.  White Helmets, a civil defence group that works in opposition areas, told dpa that nine people were killed and 31 others injured in the attack.Turkey routinely targets Kurdish militants in the region, which it regards as an existential threat.Based in Iraqâs mountainous north, the PKK - a group also designated as terrorist by the European Union and the United States - has been waging a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey.The conflict has led to the loss of tens of thousands lives since it started in 1984.