ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that Turkish forces had killed a top Syrian Kurdish commander during an offensive in neighboring Iraq.
The Turkish army last month launched a new ground and air offensive against militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party dubbed Operation Claw Lightning.
Erdogan said the military push had eliminated a Syrian-born “terrorist” who used the nom de guerre Sofi Nurettin.
He said Nurettin had served as the PKK’s top military commander in Syria.
Nurettin “was neutralized by the operation carried out in northern Iraq,” Erdogan said in televised remarks.
The PKK — listed as a terror group by Ankara and much of the international community — has been using Iraq’s northern mountains as a springboard in its decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
The Turkish army regularly conducts cross-border operations and air raids against PKK bases in northern Iraq.
Turkey launched another operation in February against PKK rebels holed up in the northern Iraqi region of Dohuk.
That raid created controversy because it was designed in part to rescue 12 Turkish soldiers and an Iraqi held captive by the PKK in a cave.
Turkey accused the PKK of executing the 13 men before they could be freed.
Erdogan said on Monday that Nurettin bore partial responsibility for the 13 deaths.
Turkey kills top Kurdish commander: Erdogan
https://arab.news/4hwf3
Turkey kills top Kurdish commander: Erdogan
- Erdogan said the military push had eliminated a Syrian-born "terrorist" who used the nom de guerre Sofi Nurettin
- Turkish army regularly conducts cross-border operations and air raids against PKK bases in northern Iraq
Fire at Iraq oil refinery kills one, injures 6
- Iraq is one of the world’s biggest oil producers and crude oil sales make up 90 percent of budget revenues
BAGHDAD: A fire at a key oil refinery killed one worker and injured six others on Monday in northern Iraq, authorities said.
The fire erupted at an upgrading unit in the Baiji refinery, once the country’s largest oil refinery, in Salaheddin province.
The Iraqi government’s security media unit said in a statement that firefighters had extinguished the fire.
It added that “one worker was killed and six others were injured.”
Local official in Baiji city Adel Al-Daj told AFP that the explosion was caused by a technical malfunction.
The Baiji refinery, 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Baghdad, was heavily damaged in some of the fiercest battles with the Daesh group after it swept across a third of Iraq in 2014.
After the facility’s full rehabilitation, authorities reopened it in February 2024.
Iraq is one of the world’s biggest oil producers and crude oil sales make up 90 percent of budget revenues.
