At least 18 militants from the outlawed Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed on Tuesday in an airstrike by a drone near the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq, a Kurdish security source said.
The airstrike took place in the afternoon when a Turkish drone bombed a school building used by PKK members as a clinic in a village near the town of Sinjar, some 100 km west of Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul, Luqman Gally, commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga security forces in the area, told media.
The attack resulted in the killing of 18 PKK members, including senior local leader Madhloom Rousi, Gally said, stressing that other bodies are still under the debris of the destroyed building.
The airstrike is the second in two successive days, as an aircraft bombed a vehicle in the old market in the center of Sinjar, killing Saeed Hassan Saeed, a leading figure in the Sinjar Protection Units (YBS), also known as Shingal (Sinjar) Resistance Units, and two of his aides, along with wounding two of Saeed’s sons at the scene, according to Gally on Monday.
The YBS is a Yazidi militia formed in Iraq in 2007 to protect the Yazidi community in Iraq. The group has strong links to the PKK group.
The PKK is seen by Turkey as a “terrorist” group, and the Turkish forces frequently carry out ground operations, airstrikes, and artillery bombardment against the positions in northern Iraq, especially the Qandil Mountains, the main base of the PKK.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.
