ANKARA: Turkey’s military stepped up an aerial bombing campaign against suspected Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq yesterday after at least 15 Turkish soldiers were killed in a cross-border attack on Friday.
Public anger is mounting after the attack — the deadliest against the military in one year — and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the powerful military have pledged to intensify a campaign to crush the outlawed PKK.
The incident has strained ties between Iraq and Turkey, which accuses its neighbor of not doing enough to combat rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) based in mountainous northern Iraq. Two soldiers were wounded in Friday’s attack, in which the rebels used heavy weapons, and two were missing.
The PKK claimed it had the bodies of the two missing soldiers. The group said in a statement that its military wing known as the Force of People of Kurdistan had taken “two bodies of Turkish soldiers after the battle in the Shamzinyan area.”
“The military continues to follow terrorist members who took part in the Oct. 3 attack,” the General Staff said in a statement, announcing the second aerial attack on rebel bases in northern Iraq since the PKK ambush.
“Our warplanes achieved their mission and came back to base safely,” the statement said.
It said the raid targeted a group of PKK militants holed up in the Avasin Basyan region.
