ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s defense ministry announced on Tuesday that a soldier was killed in the mountains of the Kurdistan Region by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) a day prior.
The ministry said in a statement that a sergeant was killed and another was wounded on Monday when an explosive device detonated in the Claw-Lock operations areas within the borders of the Kurdistan Region.
PKK-affiliated Firat News Agency (ANF) reported that the group targeted five Turkish army positions on Monday and killed four soldiers in the Zap region.
The PKK is an armed group that has fought for the rights of Kurds in Turkey. It is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, which has launched numerous operations against the group and its alleged offshoots in the Kurdistan Region and Syria.
Ankara has in the past few years intensified its campaign to eliminate the presence of PKK fighters around its borders, launching several operations in the Kurdistan Region as well as Syria where it claims to target alleged proxies of the group.
In 2019, Turkey launched Operation Claw against the PKK in Khakurk. This was followed by Operation Claw-Tiger in June 2020. The third edition of the offensive was a ground and air cross-border operation, dubbed Operation Claw-Lightning and Operation Claw-Thunderbolt, launched in April 2021. All of these operations focused on the PKK’s positions in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province.
Turkey sent its army back into the Kurdistan Region in April of last year, launching Operation Claw-Lock with the goal of targeting PKK positions in Metina, Zap, Avashin, and Basyan areas in northern Duhok province. The operation, according to Ankara, aims to remove the PKK from the bordering areas and cut off its access to mainland Turkey.
Over the past weeks, Turkey intensified its attacks inside the Kurdistan Region under the pretext of targeting PKK members, however, those attacks have also resulted in civilian casualties on multiple occasions.
On August 11, an unidentified drone killed three civilians in Sulaimani's Nalparez district. Ankara was blamed for being behind the attack despite not commenting on the incident.
Kamaran Osman, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a human rights organization that monitors Turkey's operations in the Kurdistan Region, told Rudaw last month that Turkish forces had targeted 82 sites in the Kurdistan Region since the beginning of this year. In these attacks, eight civilians were killed and three others were injured.
According to CPT data announced on Monday, Turkey has targeted 25 different locations in the Kurdistan Region since Thursday. The attacks were hundreds of kilometers away from the Turkish-Kurdistan Region border.
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