Turkish troops and Kurdish militants clashed in southeast Turkey yesterday in an escalation of violence that killed 10 soldiers and 12 rebels.
The battle at Semdinli in Hakkari Province, near the border with Iraq, re-kindled the conflict in the region and prompted the armed forces to hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets inside northern Iraq.
The PKK militants touched off the fighting with an attack on an army border unit at about 2am and 14 soldiers were wounded, the General Staff said in a statement on its Web site. The wounded have been transferred to hospitals.
“Reinforcements were sent to the region and throughout the night, support was provided to the conflict zone by attack helicopters and artillery. Separately, the Air Force struck targets identified in the northern region of Iraq,” it said.
Eight soldiers were killed in the attack on the military base and two further soldiers died when they trod on a landmine in Hakkari.
“Our fight will continue until the terrorist organization has been annihilated,” Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said.
Far-right Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli said Erdogan was the architect of the current situation. He called for a meeting tomorrow of the National Security Council and the re-introduction of a state of emergency in southeast Turkey, which ended in 2002, when Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party came to power.
The military warned on Friday the PKK might intensify its operations over the summer, when warmer weather brings increased infiltration of PKK guerrillas from the mountains of northern Iraq. Several thousand rebels are based there.
Before the latest battle, some 130 militants were estimated to have been killed in the past four months — mostly in an air raid on northern Iraq, the military told a press briefing.
Forty-three security personnel were killed in the period.
PKK activity often takes the form of remote-control bomb attacks on military convoys, raids on small outposts and firefights in the mountains of southeast Turkey.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS