New Turkish raids target the strongholds of the "Kurdistan Workers" in northern Iraq

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[size=52]New Turkish raids target the strongholds of the "Kurdistan Workers" in northern Iraq[/size]

[size=45]An Iraqi Kurdish security official in the city of Erbil said today, Wednesday, that Turkish drones launched separate raids during the past hours, on the headquarters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, which led to the outbreak of fires and the sound of secondary explosions.[/size]
[size=45]The official, a military commander in the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, stated that no less than 4 simultaneous raids targeted separate areas of the Qandil Mountains; 150 km north of Erbil, the headquarters of the anti-Ankara Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which takes the Iraqi border towns adjacent to Turkish territory as its main stronghold, was targeted.[/size]
[size=45]According to the official, who preferred not to be named, one of the raids targeted a four-wheel drive vehicle that was carrying members of the Workers' Party in the vicinity of the village of (Bukriskan), located within the Qandil municipality.[/size]
[size=45]He emphasized that the party's human losses were not known, since the region is devoid of the security presence of Iraqi or Kurdish forces, and the PKK militants are active in it, just as most of the villages have displaced their people, due to the military activities of the Workers' Party.[/size]
[size=45]The series of new Turkish raids targeting the PKK stronghold in the Iraqi Qandil Mountains, which extends for a length of 70 km within the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian border triangle, represents the latest Turkish military escalation against the armed party inside Iraqi territory, since the visit of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to Baghdad at the end of last month.[/size]
[size=45]Yesterday, Tuesday, the Workers' Party admitted that a woman in its ranks had been killed by Turkish bombing earlier this month, and said in a statement that she was called Roshna Akid.[/size]
[size=45]Self-defense
In the context, Salam al-Jaf, an expert on Kurdish political and security affairs, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that Turkish operations inside Iraq “are not being discussed by Ankara with Iraq, as it considers these operations a right to defend itself.”[/size]
[size=45]He added, "Turkey is calling on Iraq to prevent the party's militants from infiltrating its territory and carrying out attacks, which Baghdad is currently unable to do, so any negotiations between the two countries are not believed to reach a conclusion regarding Turkish operations."[/size]
[size=45]He described the Turkish air attacks as having increased at the expense of ground operations to reduce losses among soldiers on the ground, but at the same time, they represent a continuous drain on the PKK, which has recently suffered great losses at the level of personnel and weapons.[/size]
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