2023-08-10 12:04:34
Five Turkish soldiers have been killed in a shootout with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the kurdish guerilla Türkiye, in northern Iraq, the Turkish Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
The confrontation took place on Wednesday, during the “Claw Lock” operation that the Turkish army launched in April 2022 in northern Iraq, where the PKK has its refuges and rear bastions, the note specified.
According to the Turkish press, two soldiers were killed in the shooting, while three others, who were seriously injured, died in a hospital early today.
With the operation “Claw Lock”, Ankara has expanded the series of military interventions dubbed “Claw” and launched since 2019 in a border strip some 30 kilometers wide south of the Turkish border, in mountainous terrain in Iraq where the PKK has caves, tunnel systems, ammunition depots and rear posts.
In so far this yearincluding today’s casualties, 16 Turkish soldiers have died in this area, five of them during the month of July.
In recent years, fighting between the Turkish armed forces and the PKK has almost always taken place in northern Iraq, with very few clashes on Turkish soil.
According to the Turkish Defense Ministry, so far this year the Turkish army has caused more than 900 casualties to the PKK in northern Iraq and to Kurdish militias in northern Iraq Syria.
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Ankara does not usually admit that its attacks also cause civilian victims, as denounced by the Government of Iraq and Kurdish organizations in that country, as well as in Syria.
The Government of Iraq has denounced on numerous occasions that these “unilateral” attacks undermine the country’s sovereignty, have no legal justification, and has even called the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad for consultations several times to protest against these actions.
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