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Turkey kills 19 Kurdish militants in northern Iraq

December 10, 2016 at 12:13 pm

Turkish jets carried out airstrikes against Kurdish militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Gara region of northern Iraq yesterday and killed 19 militants, Turkish military sources said on today.

The warplanes took off from an air base in Diyarbakir in response to threats that the Kurdish PKK militants were preparing an attack on military units at the border, the sources said.

Turkey frequently launches air attacks against PKK targets in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq near the Turkish border, where the Kurdish militant group’s leadership has camps and bases in the Qandil mountains.

A ceasefire between the separatist PKK and the state fell apart last year, triggering some of the worst violence in the three decades of the Kurdish insurgency.

More than 40,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Turkey’s conflict with the PKK, which Ankara, the United States and European Union designate a terrorist organisation. The PKK has carried out bombings against civilian targets throughout many Turkish cities in this year alone.