Around 260 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Ankara’s week-long campaign of air strikes against targets of the outlawed group inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, the semi-official Anadolu Agency said on Aug. 1.
Without citing its sources, Anadolu said that among those wounded was Nurettin Demirtaş, the brother of the co-leader of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas.
Ankara has launched a two-pronged anti-terror offensive against Islamic State of Iraq and the LEvant (ISIL) jihadists in Syria and the outlawed PKK militants in northern Iraq and inside Turkey after a wave of attacks in the country.
In the latest air strikes on July 31, 28 Turkish F-16s destroyed 65 targets of the PKK including shelters and arms depots, the report said. The heaviest air strikes were on July 30, when 80 Turkish aircraft hit 100 targets of the PKK, according to Anadolu.
“Up until now 260 terrorists have been rendered ineffective (killed) and 380-400 terrorists have been identified as injured, including the brother of Selahattin Demirtaş, Nurettin Demirtaş,” Anadolu Agency said in its report, adding that the air strikes were expected to continue.
The Turkish government has so far refused to officially disclose casualty figures, with one official telling AFP that “this is not a football game.”
Selahattin Demirtaş openly acknowledges that his elder brother Nurettin went to the Kandil Mountain in northern Iraq where the PKK’s military headquarters are based.
“I cannot confirm the Anadolu Agency report, because my brother is not in Kandil,” the HDP co-leader said.
“My brother is not conducting a paid military service against [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] ISIL, he is resisting ISIL for the sake of his people,” he added.
Meanwhile, Turkish strikes against the PKK in northern Iraq killed at least six people on Aug. 1, AFP reported, citing local officials.
At around 4:00 a.m. Turkish warplanes struck the village of Zarkel, in the Rawanduz area east of Arbil, Nehro Abdullah, a local official told AFP, adding that two women were among six people killed in the raid, which he said completely destroyed several buildings.
He did not say whether the other victims were members of the outlawed PKK.
“We have received six bodies and eight wounded following the Turkish raids,” Maqsud Ismail Omar, a doctor and the head of the health directorate in the nearby town of Soran, told AFP.