IRBIL: Ten fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed, Iraqi Kurdish authorities said Thursday, as Turkiye said it launched renewed air strikes on northern Iraq.
Turkiye has intensified its cross-border air raids against Kurdish targets in northeastern Syria and northern Iraq in retaliation for an October 1 suicide bombing in Ankara which injured two policemen.
That attack was claimed by a branch of the outlawed PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkiye and is considered a “terrorist” group by Ankara and its Western allies.
“Nine PKK fighters were killed in a series of air strikes launched by Turkish warplanes and drones” in Irbil province in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, the Kurdish counter-terrorism service said in a statement.
A tenth PKK member was killed and three others wounded in “the bombing of several locations” belonging to the group in Dohuk province, it added.
Turkiye’s defense ministry on Thursday confirmed conducting air strikes on targets in five areas of northern Iraq, saying “many terrorists were neutralized.”
“A total of 19 targets including caves, shelters and depots used by terrorists.. were successfully destroyed and many terrorists were neutralized,” it said of the strikes which were carried out on Wednesday.
The Turkish military rarely comments on its operations in Iraq but it frequently carries out ground and air offensives against the PKK and its positions in northern Iraq.
Earlier this month, Turkiye’s parliament extended the military’s authorization to launch cross-border operations in Syria and Iraq by two more years.
Such operations were first approved in 2013 to support the international campaign against the Daesh group, and have since been renewed annually.
Over the past 25 years, Turkiye has installed dozens of military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan to fight against the PKK, which also has outposts there.
The Iraqi federal government in Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in Irbil have for years been accused of turning a blind eye to the Turkish bombardments to preserve their strategic alliance with Ankara, a key trading partner, despite statements protesting violations of Iraqi sovereignty and harm to civilians.
In summer 2022, nine people died when artillery shells hit a recreational park in the Iraqi Kurdish border village of Parakh, with most of those killed holidaymakers from southern Iraq.
Baghdad blamed Turkiye for the strike but Ankara denied responsibility and pointed the finger at the PKK.
In late July, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani’s office announced that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would visit Iraq but so far, no date has been set.
10 PKK fighters killed as Turkiye strikes northern Iraq
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10 PKK fighters killed as Turkiye strikes northern Iraq
- Turkiye has intensified its cross-border air raids against Kurdish targets in northeastern Syria and northern Iraq
Hamas to hold leadership elections in coming months: sources
- A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Hamas is preparing to hold internal elections to rebuild its leadership following Israel’s killing of several of the group’s top figures during the war in Gaza, sources in the movement said on Monday.
“Internal preparations are still ongoing in order to hold the elections at the appropriate time in areas where conditions on the ground allow it,” a Hamas leader told AFP.
The vote is expected to take place “in the first months of 2026.”
Much of the group’s top leadership has been decimated during the war, which was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023.
The war has also devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving its more than two million residents in dire humanitarian conditions.
The leadership renewal process includes the formation of a new 50-member Shoura Council, a consultative body dominated by religious figures.
Its members are selected every four years by Hamas’ three branches: the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and the movement’s external leadership.
Hamas prisoners in Israeli prisons are also eligible to vote.
During previous elections, held before the war, members across Gaza and the West Bank used to gather at different locations including mosques to choose the Shoura Council.
That council is responsible, every four years, for electing the 18-member political bureau and its chief, who serves as Hamas’s overall leader.
Another Hamas source close to the process said the timing of the political bureau elections remains uncertain “given the circumstances our people are going through.”
After Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, the group chose its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as his successor.
Israel accused Sinwar of masterminding the October 7 attack.
He too was killed by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s assassination.
Hamas then opted for an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar, postponing the appointment of a single leader until elections are held and given the risk of being targeted by Israel.
According to sources, two figures have now emerged as frontrunners to be the head of the political bureau: Khalil Al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal.
Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles since at least 2006, according to the US-based NGO the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP).
Meshaal, who led the Political Bureau from 2004 to 2017, has never lived in Gaza. He was born in the West Bank in 1956.
He joined Hamas in Kuwait and later lived in Jordan, Syria and Qatar. The CEP says he oversaw Hamas’s evolution into a political-military hybrid.
He currently heads the movement’s diaspora office.
A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing.
Hayya also enjoys backing from both the Shoura Council and Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
Another source said other potential candidates include West Bank Hamas leader Zaher Jabarin and Shoura Council head Nizar Awadallah.
