Turkey launches new attacks on PKK in Iraq

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Wednesday announced that Turkish forces had carried out retaliatory airstrikes on Iraqi positions held by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) — the group that claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in the Turkish capital Ankara Sunday.

Sunday's attack targeted Turkey's Interior Ministry. One assailant blew himself up, injuring two security officers, while another was killed in a shoot-out with police.

Authorities have since detained dozens of "suspects," mainly in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey, which borders Iraq and Syria.

Turkey warns third parties in Iraq and Syria

In televised comments, Fidan said Turkish jets had carried out two airstrikes on PKK sites in Iraq.

"From now on, all infrastructure, large facilities and energy facilities belonging to the PKK or the YPG [People's Defense Units, a PKK-affiliated Kurdish militia group] in Iraq and Syria are legitimate targets for our security forces," he warned.

"Our armed forces' response to this terrorist attack will be extremely clear and they [PKK] will regret committing such an act."

"I recommend that third parties stay away from these facilities," he added.

Turkey carried out airstrikes in Iraq within hours of the Sunday attack, as well as again on Wednesday, "neutralizing" a large number of PKK militants.

Turkish intelligence agents operating in Syria also reportedly killed a Kurdish militant suspected of being behind a bomb attack that killed six people in Istanbul last year.

Syrian Kurds say Turkey committing war crimes

Fidan said Turkish intelligence had determined that the two men behind Sunday's bomb attack had entered the country via Syria, where he also said they had been trained.

Yet that claim was flatly denied by Mazloum Abdi of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who said the attackers had not "passed through our region."

"Turkey is looking for pretexts to legitimize its ongoing attacks on our region and to launch a new military aggression," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "The threat to target the region's infrastructure, economic resources and populated cities is a war crime, something we have witnessed before."

The SDF, which was instrumental in the defeat of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria, is a Syrian-Kurdish force comprised of numerous factions, including the YPG.

The PKK — which Turkey, the US and the EU all consider to be a terror organization — has fought a decades-long insurgency against Ankara that has killed tens of thousands of people since the conflict began in 1984.

Turkey has launched repeated cross-border attacks in both Iraq and Syria and threatens to expand its incursion into Syria.

js/nm (AFP, AP)