Kurdish militants claim responsibility for deadly attack…

BAGHDAD (AP) — A banned Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility Friday for an attack on the headquarters of a major defense company in Ankara that killed at least five people.

A statement from the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, said that Wednesday’s attack on the buildings of the aerospace and defense company TUSAS was carried out by two members of the so-called “Immortal Battalion” in response to Turkish “ massacres”. and other actions in Kurdish regions.

A man and a woman stormed the TUSAS premises on the outskirts of Ankara, detonating explosives and opening fire. Four TUSAS employees died there. The attackers arrived at the scene in a taxi that they had commandeered by killing the driver.

The attackers were also killed in a subsequent battle with security teams and more than twenty people were injured in the attack.

Turkey blamed the attack on the PKK and immediately launched a series of airstrikes on locations and facilities suspected of being used by the militant group in northern Iraq or by its affiliates in northern Syria.

The attack on TUSAS came at a time of increasing signs of a possible new attempt at dialogue to end the more than four-decade-old conflict between the PKK and the Turkish military.

Earlier this week, the leader of Turkey’s far-right nationalist party, which is linked to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, raised the possibility that Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, could be released on parole if he renounces violence and disbands his organization .

Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island near Istanbul, said in a message from his cousin on Thursday that he was ready to work for peace.

However, the PKK’s military wing, the People’s Defense Center, said the attack was not related to the latest “political agenda” and stressed that it had been planned long before.

It said TUSAS was targeted because the weapons produced there “have killed thousands of civilians, including children and women, in Kurdistan.”

TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civil and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. Its defense systems are considered key to Turkey gaining the upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants.

On Friday, an Iraqi security official said Turkish warplanes have intensified their airstrikes on sites of the PKK and other loyal forces in northern Iraq’s Sinjar district. The intensive bombing targeted tunnels, headquarters and military points of the Workers’ Party and Sinjar Protection Units in the Sinjar mountain area.

A local official and a security official said the bombings killed five Yazidis. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Thursday that Turkish warplanes and drones hit bakeries, a power plant, oil facilities and local police checkpoints. At least twelve civilians were killed and 25 others were injured.

According to the People’s Defense Center statement, there were no casualties among PKK fighters in the airstrikes.

Meanwhile, police in Istanbul have arrested at least 35 people suspected of links to the PKK, state-run Anadolu Agency said.

The PKK is fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1980s. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.