Metropolis Desk-
Following the deaths of nine of its soldiers at a military base in Iraq, Turkiye carried out airstrikes during the night on nearly thirty “terrorist targets” in northern Iraq and Syria, the defense ministry announced on Saturday.
The ministry released a statement saying, “Air operations were carried out on terrorist targets in the regions of Metina, Hakurk, Gara, and Qandil.”
The ministry revised upward a previous toll of five Turkish soldiers killed during clashes that followed an attempted intrusion at the base near the northern Iraqi city of Metina.
The ministry said that 29 locations had been hit by the strikes, including “caves, bunkers, shelters, and oil installations” that are owned by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian Kurdish militia that is a key component of US-allied forces fighting Daesh, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In the course of its decades-long war against the PKK, a group that Turkiye and many of its Western allies have blacklisted as a terrorist organization, Ankara has maintained several dozen military posts in the region over the past 25 years.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, was scheduled to address the surge in attacks on military personnel in the area during an emergency security meeting on Saturday in Istanbul.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on X, formerly Twitter, that 113 people were detained on Saturday as a result of widespread raids due to suspicions they had ties to the PKK.
