Turkey Bombs Kurdish Targets After Terrorist Attack Kills Five
Turkey launched airstrikes against what it said were sites linked to a Kurdish separatist group in Iraq and Syria overnight, hours after an armed assault on a Turkish defense company that killed five people.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said Thursday that its warplanes destroyed 32 targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, an organization that Turkey and the U.S. both regard as a terrorist group.
No one has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack, in which explosions and gunfire were heard at the facilities of a defense contractor near the Turkish capital, Ankara. Turkey called it an act of terror.
Turkish authorities released the names of five people killed in the attack, which included employees of the company, Turkish Aerospace Industries, and a taxi driver. Another 22 people were injured, authorities said. Turkey’s interior minister earlier said two assailants had been killed.
The company is a major player in Turkey’s defense industry, a sector that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to develop to expand the country’s international influence. Turkish-made drones played an important role in Ukraine’s initial fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Erdogan condemned the violence near the capital as “a despicable attack targeting the survival of our country, the peace of our nation, and our defense initiatives.”
Turkey has fought a slow-burning war with Kurdish separatists in the southeast of the country in a conflict that has left thousands of people dead. In recent years, the fighting has been a source of tension with the U.S., which has partnered with Kurdish militias in Syria in a campaign to stamp out Islamic State extremists.
Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes Kurdish fighters with ties to the PKK and its Syrian offshoot, on Thursday accused Turkey of attacking “indiscriminately and unjustifiably,” hitting civilian targets, including health centers.
The SDF said in a separate statement that the airstrikes killed 12 civilians and hit bakeries, power stations, oil facilities and security checkpoints.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said its forces took “all necessary measures” to avoid hitting civilian targets during the strikes.
Turkey has wrestled with gun and bomb attacks on its major cities by both PKK affiliates and Islamic State over the past decade, though the pace of the violence has slowed in recent years.
Last year, two attackers died in an attempted bombing of a security building in Ankara, in an attack claimed by the PKK.
In November 2022, a bombing killed at least six people and wounded dozens of others on a busy pedestrian boulevard in the heart of Istanbul. The Turkish government blamed Kurdish militants, who denied responsibility.
Source » msn.com
