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PKK says 3,404 Turkish troops, 585 Kurdish fighters killed in 2016

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Kurdish militants attack Turkish army vehicle. Photo: PKK/ANF

QANDIL,— According to PKK’s balance sheet of war for 2016,  3,404 Turkish police and soldiers were killed, one F-16, 3 helicopters and 166 armored vehicles -including 8 tanks- were destroyed. 585 Kurdish guerrillas fell fighting during the year.

The press office of the HPG (People’s Defense Forces), the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK, has released the balance sheet of war for the year of 2016.

The statement said that Kurdish guerrillas as People’s Defense Forces fought a huge battle of resistance against the attacks launched by Turkey throughout 2016 based on policies of genocide and all-out annihilation.

HPG stressed that the battle that escalated during the first months of the year later enhanced and expanded from Amed to Botan, Dersim, Serhat, Amanos and Black Sea regions.

The statement emphasised that:

“During this huge battle of resistance, Turkish state forces suffered their heaviest losses in the war of 2016. The annihilation operations they launched with thousands of soldiers and technically equipped heavy weaponry had to be retreated due to the losses of Turkish forces. The enemy forces failed in the guerrilla war which has been carried out more professionally.”

HPG said hundreds of guerrillas gave a struggle on a self-sacrificial basis, and commemorated all the guerrillas and patriotic civilians that lost their lives during the resistance to protect the values created by the Kurdish people.

The statement gave the following detailed figures as to the balance sheet of war between guerrillas and Turkish forces throughout the year of 2016:

Operations And Attacks By The Turkish Army

Land operations carried out by the Turkish Army: 323

Aerial attacks (warplanes): 406

Cobra helicopter attacks: 88

Mortar, howitzer and tank attacks: 493

Actions By Kurdish Guerrillas

Actions carried out by guerrillas and clashes: 1150 (160 clashes)

Determined death personnel of Turkish forces (police-military): 3404 (38 high-ranking)

Determined wounded personnel of Turkish forces: 1334

Destroyed military (armored) vehicles: 166 (including 8 tanks)

Damaged military (armored) vehicles: 48

Destroyed aerial vehicles: 4 (including one F-16 jet)

Damaged helicopters: 25 (14 Sikorsky, 11 Cobra)

Actions with unverified results: 286

Martyred guerillas: 585 (13 fell in Shengal)

Imprisoned guerrillas: 14

Since July 2015, Turkey initiated a controversial military campaign against the PKK in the country’s southeastern Kurdish region after Ankara ended a two-year ceasefire agreement. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing civilians from fleeing regions where the military operations are being conducted.

Observers say the crackdown has taken a heavy toll on the Kurdish civilian population and accuse Turkey of using collective punishment against the minority. Activists have accused the security forces of causing huge destruction to urban centres and killing Kurdish civilians.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.

Source: Ekurd.com

How Chechens selling arms to Azeris were killed in London

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In late February 1993, a high ranking Chechen official, an aide to rebel leader and the first President of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Dzhokhar Dudayev, 38-year-old Ruslan Outsiev and his brother Nazarbek, 20, were killed at their London penthouse. As it turned out later, the assassination was linked to the Armenian security service members.

PanARMENIAN.Net – According to the primary lead, the two were killed to prevent purchase of missiles for Azerbaijan. PAN has studied the publications in foreign and Armenian Diaspora’s media outlets and presents the key circumstances of the incident.

Official Grozny said at that time that the Outsiev brothers arrived in London as Dudayev’s envoys with a brief to arrange the printing of passports and banknotes for the new Chechen state. However, along with their public mandate to print the documents of the putative Chechen state, they had a number of other missions: to secure a $250 million loan from an American businessman for the modernization of Chechnya’s huge oil refineries; to conclude negotiations with the German energy company Stinnes AG for the quick sale of Chechen oil at world prices; and as investigators later discovered, to purchase 2,000 ground-to-air Stinger missiles.

Ruslan Outsiev was the volatile Dudayev’s most trusted adviser and a hard-liner in the faction-ridden administration. His brother was a martial arts expert and general muscle-for-hire, although, Grozny said, he left for the British capital to study English. In London, Ruslan Outsiev posed as Chechen Prime Minister, but he actually was a vice chairman of the supreme presidential council headed by Dudayev.

As it often happens, Ruslan Outsiev was also a criminal authority with haughty ways. He visited expensive restaurants, booked ‘elite’ prostitutes and bought a flat for £700,000 (according to some sources, he paid £1,000,000) in Sherlock Holmes’s reputed domicile at 221B Baker Street.

To embark on complex negotiations, the Chechen government representatives needed a skilled interpreter and fixer. Ruslan Outsiev remembered that he was once interviewed by a BBC producer, Alison Ponting, and he turned to her for help. She suggested her husband, Gagik Ter-Oganisyan, who lived in London since 1988 and was a swimming-pool attendant at Wandsworth baths, hoping, perhaps, that he would find gainful employment. Thus, Ter-Oganisyan was hired by Outsiev for his London trip as a translator, guide and adviser.

A student of Russian and Eastern European Studies at Manchester University, Alison Ponting, visited Armenia in 1984 for a training, when she met Ter-Oganisyan, fell in love and kept up communicating upon returning to Britain. In 1988, they got married in Yerevan and moved to London, where Gagik, a salesman, started working as a swimming-pool attendant. Later, with his wife’s help, he went into business, exporting computers, faxes and cheap clothes to the post-soviet state.

Ter-Oganisyan attended the meetings Outsiev held and witnessed signing of contacts. At some point, relations between the Armenian and the Chechens soured. Later, England’s Crown Prosecution Service insisted that Ter-Oganisyan had discovered that the Stinger missiles were destined for Azerbaijan to be deployed in the war against his home country, Armenia. Ter-Oganisyan alerted one of his friends, Armenian KGB member Mkrtich Martirosyan, to the Utsiev brothers’ activities. The prosecution also said that a couple of hitmen were dispatched from Los Angeles, the center of the Armenian Diaspora in the United States, to London.

Disguised as the head of the Armenian chamber of commerce, senior KGB member Ashot Sargsyan arrived in London to prevent the bargain. With the help of Alison Ponting, who was, however, unaware of the goings-on, Martirosyan also got a UK entry visa.

Upon his arrival, Martorisyan met with Outsiev in Langham Hotel (Ter-Oganisyan was also present) to dissuade him from the purchase of missiles. However, Outsiev did not change his mind, thus, according to the British prosecutors, signing his own death-warrant. Determined to eliminate the Chechen, Martorisyan left for Los Angeles to hire a killer, Ashot Detmenjian. (In some documents the hitman is mentioned as Arthur, but he was presumably the same person, A. Detmenjian.) On February 20, Martorisyan returned to London, rented an apartment in a suburb and waited for the killer to arrive. However, due to certain visa problems, Detmenjian failed to reach Great Britain.

On February 26, Nazarbek Outsiev went into hospital for a sinus operation, providing the perfect opportunity for his older brother’s murder. The Chechen official was killed with three shots to the head in his luxury apartment. Two days later, Nazarbek was killed the same way upon being released from hospital. The only reason for killing the younger brother was, as it turned out later, to prevent inevitable revenge of the outraged Chechen kin.

After purchasing a fridge-freezer with a cardboard box to hold the elder Outsiev’s decomposing body, the Armenians paid two delivery men £450 to take “17th century statue” to a rented flat in London suburb. Unfortunately, the box split and the smell alarmed the men. By the time they contacted police, Nazarbek was also dead.

The policemen detained Martirosyan and Ter-Oganisyan, when they entered the Outsievs’ apartment with electric saw and sacks to disjoint Nazarbek’s body and take it away. The gun was also found at the site.

Alison Ponting was arrested as well. However, she was released after the police found out that she was completely unaware of the events.

The reasons for the double homicide were not immediately clear and the police initially thought that the brothers were killed in a robbery attempt, but the circumstances that were revealed in the course of the investigation prompted that the motive was different.

Days after the murder, Chehchen media outlets reported that it was masterminded by the Russian special services with a purpose to intimidate the Chechen leadership and make them sign the federal agreement. After the arrest, Ter-Oganisyan pleaded not guilty of killing the Outsiev brothers. The prosecution later said that he had taken a German translator on a diversionary shopping trip on that day.

Martirosyan, on the contrary, admitted the crime and confessed being a member of the Armenian national security service and acting by the order of Ashot Sargsyan. However, he later retracted, saying that the brothers were killed by a hired hitman. During the arrest, policemen discovered a small phial of snake venom under a bandage on Martirosyan’s wrist, apparently intended for his suicide. Shortly afterwards, customs officers intercepted another phial of snake venom sent by an Armenian in the United States to Ter-Oganisyan’s home presumably ordered by his wife. Alison Ponting was arrested again but soon released for absence of a crime in the act.

When in jail, Martirosyan had a visitor. According to some sources, it was Ashot Sargsyan, who gave him a flap dipped into snake poison to cut his hand and thus commit suicide. However, this attempt was also frustrated. Finally, Martirosyan hung himself in the prison cell.

The British police described Martirosyan as a clever man with a good sense of humor, despite being a brutal criminal. According to sources, the KGB threatened to settles scores with his family members in Yerevan. “The KGB will not forgive anyone,” Martirosyan used to say.

The man’s body was transported to Armenia by the request of his family. The employees of the Armenian embassy in London were not present at the trial and denied any connection of the national security service to the double homicide.

The police failed to find Sargsyan in the UK, however, he was killed in Moscow several months later in unclear circumstances.

As to Ter-Oganisyan, his direct involvement in the crime was not established in court. Although, the prosecution never knew who pulled the trigger as there were no fingerprints on the gun, Ter-Oganisyan was given a life sentence in October 2013. His wife suffered severe stress. In addition to his husband’s verdict she has become an object of revenge for the Chechens. Her life was attempted several times until her sister, Karen, who looked alike, was shot dead at the door of her house in April 1994. After the incident, Ponting was guarded by the police for a long time. There is no information available about her fate.

On the front picture, you see Afghan Mujahideen with Stinger missiles during the war

Sources:

Independent. Armenian jailed for London KGB killings: Arms deal led to deaths of brothers from rebel Russian republic in luxury flat

The New York Times. “McMafia”

E. Mickolus, S. Simmons, Terrorism, 1992-1995: A Chronology of Events and A Selectively Annotated Bibliography , 1997 Kommersant. Chechens killed for attempt to help Azerbaijan

Armenian International Magazine, Mission unraveled. The macabre case of the Dead Chechens, 1993, December

Hyusisapayl. “How Chechens’ attempt to buy Stinger missiles was frustrated”

Samson Hovhannisyan / PanARMENIAN.Net

Terrorist State of Turkey air raids Nearly 90 civilians including 21 children fallen victim in northern Syria

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Nearly 90 civilians have reportedly fallen victim to Turkish air raids in northern Syria over the past 24 hours as Ankara steps up its military campaign against what it calls Daesh positions there.

On Friday, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some of the raids hit the northwestern Syrian town al-Bab a day earlier, leaving 72 civilians dead, including 21 children.

Another 16 civilians, including three children, lost their lives in the Turkish assaults on Friday.

Over the past weeks, the Turkish military and the militants it is supporting have launched an offensive to seize al-Bab.

It is Ankara’s bloodiest attack since it began its intervention in Syria in late August.

Turkish troops are also in the neighboring country in support of the anti-Damascus militant groups in a mission said to be aimed at Daesh and Kurdish militias.

Damascus has slammed the Turkish military action as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

Turkey has long been a transit route for Daesh terrorists and other Syria-bound foreign militants seeking to topple the Damascus government.

Ankara has recently intensified its Syria campaign as foreign-backed militants have been taking heavy blows from the Damascus army on several fronts, particularly during the Aleppo battle.

On Thursday, Turkey suffered the biggest loss so far of its military campaign in Syria after over a dozen of its soldiers were reportedly killed by Daesh terrorists. The Takfiri group also claimed to have captured Turkey’s two German-made state-of-the-art Leopard main battle tanks.

Daesh also released a video of burning two Turkish soldiers alive, prompting Ankara to limit access to online social media.

Turkey has, however, remained defiant in its military push, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing to keep up the incursion.

Syria: 14 Turkish soldiers killed, 33 wounded in 3 suicide car bombs attacks

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3 suicide car bombs cause heaviest single day loss for Turkish army in its Syria operation that started in August

BY AFP,

A total of 14 Turkish soldiers were killed and 33 wounded Wednesday in attacks by Islamic State group jihadists in Syria as the military backs rebels seeking to take the town of Al Bab from the extremists, the army said.

The toll, the heaviest single day loss for the Turkish army in its Syria operation that started in August, came in fighting with jihadists that included three suicide car bomb attacks, the army added in a statement quoted by Turkish media.

The IS-held town of Al Bab, 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Turkish border, has become the main target of the army’s more than three-month campaign inside Syria in support of pro-Ankara Syrian rebels.

The Amaq news agency, affiliated to IS, said a suicide attack was carried out against the Syrian rebels and Turkish troops west of Al Bab, without giving further details.

After the lightning speed of the earlier campaign that saw the border town of Jarabulus taken on the first day of the offensive, the Turkish army has suffered increasing casualties in the fight for Al Bab.

Iraq: 1,600 Kurdish fighters killed in the fight against IU

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kurd-fighterSome 1,600 Kurdish fighters (peshmergas) have been killed since June 2014 in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq, Kurdish officials said.

Halgord Hekmat, spokesman for the ministry in charge of these forces in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, had initially said that this assessment applied to the offensive launched on October 17 on the jihadist stronghold of Mosul before correcting his remarks . The ministry’s secretary-general, Jabar Yawar, confirmed that this assessment has been applied to fighting against the IE in two and a half years.

Monday, December 5, 2016,
Stéphane © armenews.com

‘Islamic State’ militant killed in North Caucasus, Russian security forces report

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is-leader-killedRussian security forces have killed a regional leader of the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist group. Several other militants were also killed in the raid.

The leader of IS’ North Caucasus branch was killed on Saturday along with four other militants, Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, said in a statement.

Rustam Asildarov, an “emir” who swore allegiance to IS in 2014, was killed in a raid in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, after he and his fellow militants refused to surrender.

Police stormed the single-family home where the militants were hiding after they opened fire on the police during the negotiation process. The FSB said that Asildarov was behind several attacks, and some plots that were never carried out, such as one meant to target New Year’s Eve revelers in Moscow in 2010.

IS named Asildarov the governor of a newly declared Caucasus province and has claimed responsibility for attacks in Dagestan. When he was declared the group’s leader in the region, the US State Department officially labeled him a “foreign terrorist fighter.”

Many foreign jihadist fighters in Syria and Iraq are known to come from the region.

blc/jlw (dpa, AFP)

Turkey: Kurdish Freedom Fighter PKK attack killed 9, more than 100 wounded in Diyarbakır

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pkk-turkeyAt least nine people were killed and more than 100 were wounded in an attack by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Bağlar district of the southeastern province of Diyarbakır early on Nov. 4.

“Two police officers and five citizens, one of whom was a technician, have lost their lives. One terrorist was apprehended dead,” Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım told journalists at a press briefing, adding that a bomb-laden car was detonated by the militants.

“Separatist terrorism has shown its baseless, disgusting face once again in Diyarbakır. A bomb-laden vehicle was detonated in an area where anti-terror police were stationed, where citizens were going to work, and where children were going to schools. Among the over hundred wounded, 93 have been released from hospital and the treatment of seven others is ongoing,” Yıldırım added.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Diyarbakır Mayor Hüseyin Aksoy, recently appointed by Ankara after elected mayor Gültan Kışanak was removed from office, to receive information regarding the attack.

“We won’t surrender to terror. Those who are linked to terror organizations will account for it,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş wrote on his Twitter account.

According to a statement issued by the Diyarbakır Governor’s Office, PKK militants claimed responsibility for the attack, which left massive damage on the buildings around the explosion scene. The statement added that the attack was carried out near the police headquarters in a very crowded area.

Kurdish freedom fighter (PKK) attack in eastern Turkey, At least three soldiers were “neutralized” and five others injured

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pkk-killed-turkish-soldiersTurkey At least three soldiers were killed and five others injured in an Kurdish freedom fighter (PKK) attack in eastern Turkey,

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to media, said the PKK militants attacked security forces with mortar shells in the Çukurca district in the Hakkari province.
One soldier is in critical condition, said the source.

October/29/2016

Also  on Oct. 30 One soldier killed in PKK attack in Turkey’s east, attack in the eastern province of Hakkari, Doğan News Agency has reported.

PKK opened fire on soldiers in the Çukurca district of Hakkari.

Karabakh: Azerbaijani fire kills Armenain soldier

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karabakh-soldiers-killedArmenian serviceman Gurgen Aivazyan (b. 1996) was killed this evening by Azerbaijani fire while on combat duty at one of the military units in the north-eastern direction of the Line of Contact, NKR Ministry of Defense reports.

An investigation into the incident is underway.

The Ministry extends condolences to the family and companions-in arms of the killed soldier.

The NKR Ministry of Defense also says that Azerbaijani troops continued ceasefire violations along the Line of Contact on Wednesday. Azerbaijani forces used an AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher and a SPG-9 tripod-mounted anti-tank gun in the northeastern direction (Talish).

Kurdish Liberation Army PKK killed 10 Turkish soldiers seven wounded in attacks Turkey’s southeast

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10-killed-7-woundedAt least 10 Turkish soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded on Sept. 26 in two separate attacks by the of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the country’s southeast.

Six soldiers were killed in an atack on a checkpoint in Şırnak, while four others were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Mardin’s Derik district.

PKK  remotely detonated an explosive placed on the Kızıltepe-Derik motorway during the passing of a civilian-plated minibus carrying soldiers at around 9:20 a.m. near Tepedağ village.

Four soldiers were killed and another six were wounded in the attack, according to initial reports.

The wounded soldiers were transferred to hospitals in Derik and Kızıltepe.

Hous later, six soldiers were killed in the Uludere district of the southeastern province of Şırnak during a clash with PKK , Doğan News Agency has reported.

A number of ambulances were dispatched to the scene for the wounded soldiers at the checkpoint near a prison, Doğan said. One PKK militant was also killed in clashes.

Separately, a bomb planted by PKK hit a freight train in the eastern province of Van on Sept. 25, injuring two personnel and damaging four wagons, the regional governor’s office said.

“The train’s locomotive was damaged and burnt, while four wagons derailed,” a statement by the Van Governor’s Office said.

Earlier, the local railway station directorate in the province’s Saray district told Anadolu Agency that PKK  detonated the bomb when the TCDD-53032 train passed by after it came from the Kapikoy border gate located along the Turkish- Iranian border, 10 kilometers away from Saray.

Meanwhile, a Turkish armed drone “neutralized” at least three PKK  in an airstrike in southeastern Turkey’s Hakkari.