5 Kurdish militants killed in Turkish drone strike in Iraq

Baghdad, July 18 (IANS) Five militants of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed in a Turkish drone strike in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh, official sources said.

The five PKK members, including a woman, were killed when a Turkish drone bombarded their vehicle moving near a village in the west of the provincial capital Mosul, nearly 400 km north of Baghdad, according to a statement by the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service.

The attack occurred at 2:20 p.m, on Sunday when a Turkish drone bombed a civilian vehicle in the west of Mosul and killed four men and a woman, said Governor of Nineveh Province Najm al-Jubouri in a separate statement.

Al-Jubouri strongly condemned the drone strike, saying such attacks would destabilise the security situation in the Iraqi province and demanding a protest by the Iraqi central government, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Turkish forces frequently carry out ground operations, airstrikes and artillery bombardments in Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, especially the Qandil Mountains, the main base of the PKK.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and the European Union.

–IANS
int/khz/