 in northern Iraq on Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported, citing officials in the autonomous Kurdistan region. ){kind=link}
A Turkish drone strike killed a military official from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq on Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported, citing officials in the autonomous Kurdistan region.
The “Turkish army drone” targeted a car with PKK fighters in the district of Chamchamal, near Iraqi Kurdistan’s second city of Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan’s counterterrorism services said.
“A PKK military official was killed, and another fighter was wounded,” it added in a statement.
Since 1984 the PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkey that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, and Ankara has long maintained dozens of military bases inside northern Iraq where it regularly launches operations against its fighters.
The Turkish army rarely comments on its strikes against PKK bases in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Ankara and its Western allies classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.
At the end of July four PKK militants were killed in the same region in a drone strike also attributed to Turkey by Iraqi Kurdistan.
Both the Iraqi federal authorities and the Kurdistan regional government have been accused of tolerating Turkey’s military activities to preserve their close economic ties.
However, officials have repeatedly condemned Turkish operations in Iraq, describing them as a violation of the country’s sovereignty and the rights of its civilians.
On July 25 the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani referred to an “upcoming visit” by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but it has yet to provide further details.