BAGHDAD: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called for combined regional efforts to combat outlawed Kurdish fighters in Iraq and neighboring Syria during a visit to Baghdad on Sunday.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as PKK, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state, holds positions in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkiye and its Western allies, and Ankara accuses Kurdish forces in Syria of links to the outlawed group.

“I want to emphasize this fact in the strongest way: The PKK is targeting Turkiye, Iraq and Syria,” Fidan said in a press conference with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein.

“We must combine all our resources and destroy both Daesh and the PKK,” he added.

Fidan’s visit comes after two Iraqi border guards were killed Friday near the Turkish border in a shooting that Baghdad blamed on the PKK. After the attack, Ankara vowed to work with Iraq to secure their common frontier.

Turkiye regularly launches strikes against the PKK in Iraq and Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Baghdad has recently sharpened its tone against the PKK, and last year it quietly listed the group as a “banned organization” — though Ankara demands the Iraqi government do more in the fight against the militant group.

“Our ultimate expectation from Iraq is that it recognizes the PKK, which it has declared a banned organization, as a terrorist organization as well,” Fidan said.

In August, Baghdad and Ankara signed a military cooperation deal to establish joint command and training centers with the aim of fighting the PKK.

The foreign ministers also discussed the fight against Daesh on the Iraqi-Syrian border, Hussein said during the press conference, as well as the situation in Syria, where former leader Bashar Assad was toppled in December.

“There are clear understandings between ... Turkiye and Iraq on how to address” the situation there, he said, adding that Baghdad was in contact with the new Syrian authorities and was “trying to coordinate on many issues.”

Earlier this month, Fidan threatened to launch a military operation against Kurdish forces in Syria, where Turkiye has carried out successive ground operations to push the fighters away from its border.

The Kurdish forces there are seen by the West as essential in the fight against Daesh.

CAIRO: Two Palestinian sources told AFP on Sunday that an Israeli woman held hostage in Gaza, and whose release Israel has demanded before allowing the return of displaced Palestinians, will be handed over within days.
“Arbel Yehud is expected to be freed before the next (hostage-prisoner) exchange” scheduled for February 1, said a source from the Islamic Jihad militant group.
Another Palestinian source familiar with the issue said Yehud is expected to be released by Friday.
“The release of Arbel Yehud will happen most likely by next Friday in exchange for 30 prisoners serving life sentences,” the source said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly.
Israel has accused Hamas of reneging on the ceasefire deal by not releasing Yehud when the second hostage-prisoner took place on Saturday.
As a civilian woman, Yehud “was supposed to be released” as part of the second hostage-prisoner swap under the truce deal, a statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Labelling it a violation by Hamas of the ceasefire deal, Netanyahu’s office said it “will not allow the passage of Gazans to the northern part of the Gaza Strip until the release of civilian Arbel Yehud... is arranged.”
On Saturday, two Hamas sources told AFP that Yehud was “alive and in good health,” with one source saying she would be “released as part of the third swap set for next Saturday.”
But on Sunday, the two Palestinian sources said she was expected to be released following an intervention by mediators Egypt and Qatar.
“The crisis has been resolved,” said the source familiar with the issue.
Tens of thousands of displaced Gazans massed on Sunday on the road to the north but were not allowed to pass through, AFP correspondents reported.