Helin Halana, also known as Layla Karabash, was killed in an airstrike on Tuesday in Qandil in the Kurdistan Region on the Turkey-Iraq-Iran border, according to an HPG statement published by the PKK-affiliated Roj News on Thursday.
“Turkish warplanes bombarded...the Zape area on August 20, martyring Helin Helena,” read the group’s statement.
Another PKK-affiliated outlet ANF News published the statement as well.
Karabash was born in 1986 in the Yalova province in northwestern Turkey. She joined the PKK in 2001.
Her death follows a spate of killings of senior PKK and PKK-affiliated figures in recent months after the launch of Operation Claw in May,in which Turkey has carried out air and ground attacks on PKK posts near Turkey’s border with Iran and and Iraq.
On July 5, Diyar Ghareeb, a senior Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) official, was killed alongside two others in a Turkish airstrike on the Qandil Mountains on July 5, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) confirmed in a statement on July 7.
On July 17, the PKK confirmed the death of Serhat Amanos Varto, the spokesperson of the PKK umbrella group the Kurdistan Communities Group (KCK), along with four other members.
Turkish forces have “neutralized” – a term Turkish forces used to describe anyone killed injured or captured in their operations - 635 of PKK fighters in 2019, according to a tweet by the state-run Anadolu Agency on Thursday.
The PKK has hit Turkey recently as well. Today, three Turkish soldiers guarding a state-run Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) site were killed in fighting with PKK militants on Thursday in Sirnak province, close to the Turkey-Syria-Iraq border, Reuters reported.
The PKK and Turkish state have been locked in a decades-long military conflict, resulting in the death of roughly 40,000 people, including civilians.
They reached a ceasefire deal in 2013 which lasted for more than two years, before deadly fighting resumed in the Kurdish provinces of eastern and southeastern Turkey.
Some 4,551 people have been
killed since the peace process fell apart on July 20, 2015, according to the most recent figures from the International Crisis Group (ICG).
