VAN, Turkey—Turkey’s military engaged in full combat with militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party inside Iraq on Tuesday, said the PKK, as the group is known.
The PKK saıd around 1,000 Turkish troops with heavy weaponry had entered part of the militants’ base area, supported by planes and «Cobra-type» helicopters.
There have been conflicting reports about the scale and level of conflict ever since Turkey announced it as sending some 10,000 troops to hunt down the PKK in retaliation for killing 24 Turkish soldiers on Oct. 19.
Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan, speaking at a joint news conference Tuesday with his Azerbaijani counterpart İlham Aliyev, denied reports that the military had sent tanks across the Iraqi border, as well as a report that as many as 1,300 PKK militants had been killed in the operation to date.
The PKK is active in the region where a major earthquake struck on Sunday, and the group has many supporters there. Mr. Erdogan is working to win backing from ordinary Kurds for his effort to crush or marginalize the group.
Turkey’s Chief of the General Staff Necdet Ozel had said in a TV interview on Monday that 54 PKK militants had been killed inside Turkey and 200 to 270 in İraq. The PKK claims those figures to be much lower. Casualty claims by both sides against the other have in the past been wildly exaggerated.
Violence between Turkish security forces and the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S., the European Union and Turkey, has been escalating since the spring. Hopes for a negotiated solution to the conflict have been shelved. An estimated 30,000 people have died in the conflict since it began as a campaign to force an independent Kurdish state in 1984.
Source: /online.wsj.com