ANKARA: Turkey and Iraq’s central government in Baghdad will carry out a joint operation against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Cavusoglu’s comments came as Turkey pushed ahead with a cross-border military operation against the Kurdish YPG militia in northern Syria’s Afrin region.
Speaking to reporters on his flight from Germany to Austria, Cavusoglu said the Afrin operation, launched on Jan. 20, will be completed by May, according to broadcaster CNN Turk.
Cavusoglu was quoted as saying the joint cross-border operation with Iraq may start after Iraq holds parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2018, signaling Turkish troops may move to northern Iraq following the ongoing offensive.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast since the 1980s, has camps in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, from which it frequently carries out attacks into Turkey.
The PKK is viewed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Ankara considers the YPG to be a Syrian extension of the PKK.
Turkey's state-run news agency said, meanwhile, that Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition forces had entered the town of Jinderes, in the enclave's southwest, where they were engaged in street clashes with Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that a siege of Afrin's main city would begin after Jinderes is taken.
Turkey, Iraq to carry out joint operation against Kurdish militants in Iraq
Turkey, Iraq to carry out joint operation against Kurdish militants in Iraq
Israel agrees to ‘limited reopening’ of Rafah crossing: PM’s office
- The announcement came after visiting US envoys reportedly pressed Israeli officials to reopen the crossing, a vital entry point for aid into Gaza
JERUSALEM: Israel said Monday it would allow a “limited reopening” of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt once it had recovered the remains of the last hostage in the Palestinian territory.
The announcement came after visiting US envoys reportedly pressed Israeli officials to reopen the crossing, a vital entry point for aid into Gaza.
Reopening Rafah forms part of a Gaza truce framework announced by US President Donald Trump in October, but the crossing has remained closed after Israeli forces took control of it during the war.
The Israeli military also said it was searching a cemetery in the Gaza Strip on Sunday for the remains of the last hostage, Ran Gvili, a non-commissioned officer in the police’s elite Yassam unit.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the reopening would depend on “the return of all living hostages and a 100 percent effort by Hamas to locate and return all deceased hostages,” Netanyahu’s office said on X.
It said Israel’s military was “currently conducting a focused operation to exhaust all of the intelligence that has been gathered in the effort to locate and return” Gvili’s body.
“Upon completion of this operation, and in accordance with what has been agreed upon with the US, Israel will open the Rafah Crossing,” it said.
