Turkish military says kills 13 Kurdish militants in northern Iraq

(Reuters/IraqiNews.com) Turkey’s military killed 13 members of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in air strikes in northern Iraq on Sunday, the military said in a statement.

The warplanes struck seven PKK targets in the Avasin-Basyan region of northern Iraq, and killed militants believed to be preparing for an attack, the military said.

In a separate air strike in Turkey’s southeastern province of Van late on Saturday, the military said warplanes had killed another 10 PKK militants.

The PKK, which has carried out a three-decade insurgency in southeast Turkey, has camps in the mountains of northern Iraq, near the Turkish border. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Turkey and Iraq had engaged in diplomatic disputes a few months ago over the deployment of Turkish troops in Iraq;s Nineveh. While Ankara said its forces were training local groups to fight Islamic State militants, Baghdad maintained that the military presence represented a breach of its sovereignty.

Ankara has also been concerned with Kurdish groups in neighboring Syria. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has been actively engaged in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, but Ankara views the group as an extension of the PKK.