Turkey launched airstrikes over northern regions of Syria and Iraq, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, targeting Kurdish groups that Ankara holds responsible for last week’s bomb attack in Istanbul.
Warplanes attacked bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG), the ministry said in a statement, which was accompanied by images of F-16 jets taking off and footage of a strike from an aerial drone.
There was no immediate comment from either group.
Photo: AP
The ministry cited Turkey’s right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter in launching an operation it called Claw-Sword late on Saturday night.
It said it was targeting areas “used as a base by terrorists in their attacks on our country.”
Turkey said it was seeking to prevent attacks, secure its southern border and “destroy terrorism at its source.”
The airstrikes came after a bomb rocked a bustling avenue in the heart of Istanbul on Nov. 13, killing six people and wounding more than 80. Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the PKK and its Syrian affiliate, the YPG. The Kurdish militant groups have denied involvement.
Ankara and Washington consider the PKK a terror group, but disagree on the status of the YPG. Under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the YPG has been allied with the US in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.
The PKK has fought an armed insurgency in Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since then.
Following the strikes, the defense ministry posted a photograph of an F-16 plane with the text: “Payback time. The scoundrels are being held to account for their treacherous attacks.” The Demiroren News Agency reported that the F-16s took off from airfields in Malatya and Diyarbakir in southern Turkey, while drones were launched from Batman.
Turkish Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar oversaw the airstrikes from an operations center and congratulated pilots and ground staff.
“Our aim is to ensure the security of our 85 million citizens and our borders, and to retaliate for any treacherous attack on our country,” a ministry statement quoted him as saying.
“Shelters, bunkers, caves, tunnels and warehouses belonging to terrorists were destroyed with great success... The so-called headquarters of the terrorist organization were also hit and destroyed with direct hits,” he said.
The airstrikes targeted Kobani, a strategic Kurdish-majority Syrian town near the Turkish border that Ankara had previously attempted to overtake in its plans to establish a “safe zone” along northern Syria.
Syrian Democratic Forces spokesperson Farhad Shami wrote on Twitter that two villages populated with displaced people were under Turkish bombardment.
He said the strikes had resulted in “deaths and injuries.”
Local media reported that the northern Iraqi city of Sinjar was also targeted.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the strikes had also hit Syrian army positions and that at least 12 people had been killed, including Syrian Democratic Forces and Syrian soldiers.
The observatory said about 25 airstrikes were carried out by Turkish warplanes on sites in the countryside of Aleppo, Raqqa and Hasakah.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
RSS