By RIA Novosti
Ankara : The Turkish army has ended its major ground offensive against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, Turkey’s NTV television station said on Friday.
Turkey launched a large-scale ground operation targeting militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the north of Iraq on February 21, with more than 10,000 troops crossing 10 kilometers (six miles) into Iraq.
NTV cited Jabar Yawir, an Iraqi deputy minister responsible for security forces in the Kurdish area, as saying that the ground offensive had ended, in particular, in the Zap region – the main target of the Turkish offensive.
Turkey’s military have not yet confirmed the report.
According to official data, the Turkish army killed 237 rebels during the eight-day operation in the mountainous northern Iraq and suffered the loss of 24 soldiers.
The Turkish parliament gave the government a mandate last October to conduct cross-border operations in northern Iraq against about 3,500 PKK militants based there.
The PKK, listed by the U.S., NATO and the EU as a terrorist organization, has been fighting for autonomy status in southeast Turkey for nearly 25 years. The conflict has so far claimed about 40,000 lives.