Turkey’s Defence Ministry has disclosed that it has successfully conducted overnight air strikes on nearly 30 “terrorist targets” in northern Iraq and Syria after nine of its soldiers were killed in a military base in Iraq.
The ministry said in a statement on Sunday morning that; “Air operations were carried out on terrorist targets in the regions of Metina, Hakurk, Gara and Qandil”.
The Turkish soldiers were killed during clashes that followed an attempted intrusion at the base near the northern Iraqi city of Metina, the ministry said, revising upward a previous toll of five.
The ministry said the strikes had targeted 29 locations including “caves, bunkers, shelters and oil installations” belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the YPG (People’s Protection Units), a Syrian Kurdish militia which is a central element of US-allied forces in a coalition against Islamic State.
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Ankara has operated several dozen military posts in the area for the past 25 years in its decades-old war against the PKK, a group blacklisted by Turkey and many of its Western allies as a terrorist organisation.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was due to hold an emergency security meeting Saturday in Istanbul to discuss the uptick in attacks on troops in the region.
Meanwhile, no fewer than 113 people were arrested for suspected links with the PKK in nationwide raids on Saturday, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X, formerly Twitter.
In another report, the United States Secretary of States Antony Blinken had on Sunday declared that he wants to make sure the conflict in the Middle East “doesn’t spread”, as he held meetings in Turkey and Greece.
Blinken, on a new tour of the Middle East, met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Crete on Saturday, a few hours after a long meeting in Istanbul with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“One of the real concerns is the border between Israel and Lebanon, and we want to do everything possible to make sure we see no escalation,” he told journalists in Crete after the meeting.
Washington’s top diplomat said it was in nobody’s interest to escalate the conflict or allow it to spread beyond Gaza.