Turkish strike in Iraq kills 4 militants: Kurdish officials

Four “fighters” from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have been killed by a drone strike in northern Iraq, officials in the autonomous Kurdistan region said, blaming the Turkish military.

The strike on Friday near Iraqi Kurdistan’s second city Sulaimaniyah came as Kurdish authorities in neighbouring Syria said a drone attack also by Turkey had killed four members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Ankara and its Western allies classify the PKK as a “terrorist” organisation. Turkey also considers the main component of the SDF, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), to be a “terrorist” offshoot of the PKK.

The Turkish army rarely comments on its strikes in Iraq, but routinely targets PKK rear bases in the mountains of the Kurdistan region.

On Friday around 8:00 pm (1700 GMT), “four PKK fighters were killed and another wounded when a Turkish army drone targeted their vehicle near the village of Rangina” north of Sulaimaniyah, according to a statement from Iraqi Kurdistan’s anti-terrorism services.

Since 1984 the PKK has waged an insurgency in Turkey that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, and Ankara has long maintained military positions inside northern Iraq where it regularly launches operations against them.

Two raids a week apart in May in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Sinjar district killed six Yazidi fighters affiliated with the PKK, in strikes local security officials blamed on Ankara.