By Xinhua
Ankara : The Turkish General Staff said Tuesday that Turkish airplanes hit targets of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in north of Iraq.
The General Staff said in a statement posted on its website that Turkish jets bombed PKK targets in Zap-Sivi, Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk regions in north of Iraq.
“We have targeted only the PKK camps in the air strike. The General Staff is sensitive not to affect civilian people in the region,” said the statement, adding that Turkish jets had accomplished their mission and returned safely to their bases.
An Iraqi Kurdish official was quoted by CNN Turk as saying earlier in the day that Turkish jets bombed PKK targets near the town of Hakurk, which was close to Iraq’s border with Iran and Turkey.
The Turkish military has recently launched several cross-border attacks to fight against PKK separatists, who use the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq as a launch pad for attacks against Turkey.
The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.