Turkish army says killed 34 Kurdish militants in air strikes in northern Iraq
Turkish F-16 fighte jet
The strikes targeted militants in Iraq’s Zap region and were conducted shortly after midnight and before noon, the military said in a statement.
PKK militants, who have fought a three-decade insurgency in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast, have camps in the mountains of northern Iraq, where they have been regularly hit by Turkish warplanes since a two-year ceasefire collapsed in July 2015.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, including several thousand since the fighting resumed after the ceasefire.
The PKK, which Turkey has blamed for multiple deadly bomb attacks in cities over the last year, is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
Ankara has pressed Baghdad to force PKK fighters out of the Iraqi region of Sinjar. Relations between both countries became tense and developed into a diplomatic war of words last year when Baghdad urged Ankara to pull out forces the latter says it deploys to combat Islamic State militants. Baghdad had deemed the deployment as a transgression upon its sovereignty.