PKK claims responsibility for deadly attack on Turkish arms company in Ankara

On Friday, a banned Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for attacking the headquarters of a key arms company in Syria Turkish capital Ankara in which at least five people died.

Statement of the military command Kurdistan Workers’ PartyThe PKK said Wednesday’s attack on the headquarters of aerospace and defense company TUSAS was carried out by two members of its so-called “Immortality Battalion” in response to Turkish “massacres” and other actions in Kurdish regions.

A man and a woman stormed the TUSAS headquarters on the outskirts of Ankara, planting explosives and opening fire. Four TUSAS employees died there. The attackers arrived at the scene in a taxi, which they commandeered, killing its driver.

The attackers were also killed in the subsequent battle with security teams, and more than 20 people were injured in the attack.

Turkey blamed the attack on the PKK and immediately launched a series of airstrikes against sites and facilities suspected of being used by the militant group in northern Iraq or its affiliates in northern Iraq. Syria.

The attack on TUSAS came as signs grew of a possible new attempt at dialogue to end the more than four-decade conflict between the PKK and Turkey’s military.

Earlier this week, the leader of a Turkish far-right nationalist party allied with the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned PKK leader, could be granted parole if he renounced violence and disbanded his organization.

Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island near Istanbul, said Thursday in a message from his nephew that he is ready to work for peace.

However, the PKK’s military wing, the People’s Defense Center, said the attack was unrelated to the latest “political agenda”, saying it had been planned well in advance.

That said TUSAS was targeted because weapons manufactured there “have killed thousands of civilians in Kurdistan, including children and women.”

TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civil and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense and space industry systems. Its defense systems were considered key to Turkey gaining an advantage in the fight against Kurdish fighters.

On Friday, an Iraqi security official said Turkish warplanes had intensified airstrikes on facilities belonging to the PKK and other loyal forces in the northern part of the country. Iraq Sinjar district. Intense bombing targeted tunnels, headquarters and military posts of the Workers’ Party and the Sinjar Protection Units in the Sinjar Mountain area.

A local official and a security official said five people were killed in the attacks Yazidis. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Thursday that Turkish warplanes and drones struck bakeries, a power plant, oil facilities and local police checkpoints. At least 12 civilians were killed and 25 others injured.

A statement from the People’s Defense Center said there were no casualties among PKK fighters in the airstrikes.

Meanwhile, the police in Istanbul arrested at least 35 people suspected of links to the state-owned PKK Anadolu Agency reported.

The PKK is fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1980s. Türkiye and its Western allies consider it a terrorist group.