Kurdish militants claim responsibility for deadly attack…

BAGHDAD (AP) — A banned Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility Friday an attack on headquarters of a major defense company in Ankara, killing 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 an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, raised the possibility that Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, parole could be granted 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 bombings targeted tunnels, headquarters and military points of the PKK and Sinjar Protection Units in the Sinjar Mountains.

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 Turkish Defense Ministry said 34 suspected PKK targets, including caves, shelters, depots and other facilities, were hit overnight in an air operation. Turkey’s state agency Anadolu said national intelligence drones have hit 120 suspected locations since Wednesday’s attack.

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.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of journalists late Thursday upon returning from a trip to Russia that the two TUSAS attackers had infiltrated from Syria, but gave no details.

Speaking at a defense industry fair in Istanbul on Friday, he said Turkey was determined to eradicate the militant group.

“Although our pain is great because of our martyrs, our determination to fight against the villains is much greater,” Erdogan said. “We will continue to crush those who think they can force us to step back with such betrayal.”

On Friday, Turkish police arrested 176 suspected PKK members during operations across Turkey, the Interior Ministry said.

Police also arrested a man who threw stones at the entrance to the headquarters of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Equality and Democracy Party, DEM, Anadolu reported. DEM party spokesperson Aysegul Dogan said on media platform X that the entrance door and windows were broken in the attack.

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.