ANKARA: Turkiye struck suspected Kurdish militant targets in Syria and Iraq for a second day on Thursday following an attack on the premises of a key defense company that killed at least five people, the state-run news agency reported.
The National Intelligence Organization targeted numerous “strategic locations” used by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — the PKK — or by Syrian Kurdish militia that are affiliated with the militants, the Anadolu Agency reported. The targets included military, intelligence, energy and infrastructure facilities and ammunition depots, the report said. A security official said armed drones were used in Thursday’s strikes.
On Wednesday, Turkiye’s air force carried out airstrikes against similar targets in northern Syria and northern Iraq, hours after government officials blamed the deadly attack at the headquarters of the aerospace and defense company TUSAS, on the PKK.
Defense Minister Yasar Guler said Thursday that 47 alleged PKK targets were destroyed in Wednesday’s airstrikes — 29 in Iraq and 18 in Syria.
“Our noble nation should rest assured that we will continue with increasing determination our struggle to eliminate the evil forces that threaten the security and peace of our country and people until the last terrorist disappears from this geography,” Guler said.
The assailants — a man and a woman — arrived at the TUSAS premises on the outskirts of Ankara in a taxi they commandeered after killing its driver, reports said. Armed with assault rifles, they set off explosives and opened fire, killing four people at TUSAS, including a security guard and a mechanical engineer.
Security teams were dispatched as soon as the attack started at around 3:30 pm, the interior minister said. The two assailants were also killed and more than 20 people were injured in the attack.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya named the assailants as Mine Sevjin Alcicek and Ali Orek and identified them as PKK members.
There was no immediate statement from the PKK on the attack or the Turkish airstrikes.
In Syria, the main US-backed force said Turkish strikes in the north of the country killed 12 civilians and wounded 25.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Turkish warplanes and drones struck bakeries, power stations, oil facilities and local police checkpoints.
Amir Samu, an administrator at the al Swediya oil refinery in Derik, northern Syria, said overnight strikes at the facility resulted in the deaths of seven workers and guards.
“They were all poor workers working in the refinery to make a living. It is a civil institution, not military or anything like that,” he said.
Samu stated that al Swediya was the only refinery “feeding” the area. “The damage will have effects on diesel, petrol and gas,” he said.
TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civilian and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. Its defense systems have been credited as key to Turkiye gaining an upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants.
The attack occurred a day after the leader of Turkiye’s far-right nationalist party that’s allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that the PKK’s imprisoned leader could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands his organization.
Abdullah Ocalan, who was captured in 1999, is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul.
In a related development, his nephew Omer Ocalan announced on the social platform X that on Wednesday family members were allowed to visit him for the first time since March 2020.
Omer Ocalan, a lawmaker from Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, also conveyed a message from Abdullah Ocalan, saying he was being kept in isolation and offering to work to end the conflict “if the conditions are right.”
“I have the theoretical and practical power to (transform) this process from one grounded in conflict and violence to one that is grounded on law and politics,” Omer Ocalan quoted his uncle as saying.
The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkiye in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1980s. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkiye and its Western allies.
On Thursday, large crowds gathered in the courtyard of a mosque in Ankara to take part in the funeral prayers for three of the victims, including Zahide Guclu — an engineer who was part of a TUSAS helicopter project. She was killed by the assailants after she had gone to the entrance of the complex to collect flowers sent by her husband.
Turkiye strikes Kurdish militant targets in Syria and Iraq for a second day
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Turkiye strikes Kurdish militant targets in Syria and Iraq for a second day
- The National Intelligence Organization targeted numerous “strategic locations” used by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
- Defense Minister Yasar Guler said Thursday that 47 alleged PKK targets were destroyed in Wednesday’s airstrikes — 29 in Iraq and 18 in Syria
Iraq PM says Mosul airport to open in June, 11 years after Daesh capture
- On June 10, 2014, the Daesh group seized Mosul
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani on Sunday ordered for the inauguration of the airport in second city Mosul to be held in June, marking 11 years since Islamists took over the city.
On June 10, 2014, the Daesh group seized Mosul, declaring its “caliphate” from there 19 days later after capturing large swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
After years of fierce battles, Iraqi forces backed by a US-led international coalition dislodged the group from Mosul in July 2017, before declaring its defeat across the country at the end of that year.
In a Sunday statement, Sudani’s office said the premier directed during a visit there “for the airport’s opening to be on June 10, coinciding with the anniversary of Mosul’s occupation, as a message of defiance in the face of terrorism.”
Over 80 percent of the airport’s runway and terminals have been completed, according to the statement.
Mosul’s airport had been completely destroyed in the fighting.
In August 2022, then-prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi laid the foundation stone for the airport’s reconstruction.
Sudani’s office also announced on Sunday the launch of a project to rehabilitate the western bank of the Tigris in Mosul, affirming that “Iraq is secure and stable and on the right path.”
Turkiye’s top diplomat meets Syria’s new leader in Damascus
- Hakan Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders
- Turkiye’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Bashar Assad’s fall
ANKARA: Turkiye’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan met with Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, Ankara’s foreign ministry said.
A video released by the Anadolu state news agency showed the two men greeting each other.
No details of where the meeting took place in the Syrian capital were released by the ministry.
Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders, who ousted Syria’s strongman Bashar Assad after a lightning offensive.
Turkiye’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Assad’s fall.
Kalin was filmed leaving the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, surrounded by bodyguards, as broadcast by the private Turkish channel NTV.
Turkiye has been a key backer of the opposition to Assad since the uprising against his rule began in 2011.
Besides supporting various militant groups, it has welcomed Syrian dissenters and millions of refugees.
However, Fidan has rejected claims by US president-elect Donald Trump that the militants’ victory in Syria constituted an “unfriendly takeover” of the country by Turkiye.
Syria’s de facto ruler reassures minorities, meets Lebanese Druze leader
- Ahmed Al-Sharaa said no sects would be excluded in Syria in what he described as ‘a new era far removed from sectarianism’
- Walid Jumblatt said at the meeting that Assad’s ouster should usher in new constructive relations between Lebanon and Syria
DAMASCUS: Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmed Al-Sharaa hosted Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on Sunday in another effort to reassure minorities they will be protected after Islamist militants led the ouster of Bashar Assad two weeks ago.
Sharaa said no sects would be excluded in Syria in what he described as “a new era far removed from sectarianism.”
Sharaa heads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the main group that forced Assad out on Dec. 8. Some Syrians and foreign powers have worried he may impose strict Islamic governance on a country with numerous minority groups such as Druze, Kurds, Christians and Alawites.
“We take pride in our culture, our religion and our Islam. Being part of the Islamic environment does not mean the exclusion of other sects. On the contrary, it is our duty to protect them,” he said during the meeting with Jumblatt, in comments broadcast by Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed.
Jumblatt, a veteran politician and prominent Druze leader, said at the meeting that Assad’s ouster should usher in new constructive relations between Lebanon and Syria. Druze are an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam.
Sharaa, dressed in a suit and tie rather than the military fatigues he favored in his militant days, also said he would send a government delegation to the southwestern Druze city of Sweida, pledging to provide services to its community and highlighting Syria’s “rich diversity of sects.”
Seeking to allay worries about the future of Syria, Sharaa has hosted numerous foreign visitors in recent days, and has vowed to prioritize rebuilding Syria, devastated by 13 years of civil war.
Al-Sharaa vowed not to “negatively” interfere in neighboring Lebanon.
During his meeting with the visiting Lebanese Druze chiefs, Al-Sharaa said Syria will no longer exert “negative interference in Lebanon at all.”
He added that Damascus “respects Lebanon’s sovereignty, the unity of its territories, the independence of its decisions and its security stability.”
Syria “will stay at equal distance from all” in Lebanon, Al-Sharaa added, acknowledging that Syria has been a “source of fear and anxiety” for the country.
The Syrian army entered Lebanon in 1976, only leaving in 2005 after enormous pressure following the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a killing attributed to Damascus and its ally, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
* With Reuters and AFP
Pope Francis again condemns ‘cruelty’ of Israeli strikes on Gaza
- Comes a day after the pontiff lamented an Israeli airstrike that killed seven children from one family on Friday
- ‘And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty’
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis doubled down Sunday on his condemnation of Israel’s strikes on the Gaza Strip, denouncing their “cruelty” for the second time in as many days despite Israel accusing him of “double standards.”
“And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty,” the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer.
It comes a day after the 88-year-old Argentine lamented an Israeli airstrike that killed seven children from one family on Friday, according to Gaza’s rescue agency.
“Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” the pope told members of the government of the Holy See.
His remarks on Saturday prompted a sharp response from Israel.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman described Francis’s intervention as “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism — a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.”
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people,” he added.
“Cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children; cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them,” the Israeli statement said.
This was a reference to the Hamas Palestinian militants who attacked Israel, killed many civilians and took hostages on October 7, 2023, triggering the Gaza war.
The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
That toll includes hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
At least 45,259 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in the Palestinian territory, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Those figures are taken as reliable by the United Nations.
Iran’s supreme leader says Syrian youth will resist incoming government
- Iran had provided crucial support to Assad throughout Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war
- Iran’s supreme leader accused the United States and Israel of plotting against Assad’s government
TEHRAN: Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday said that young Syrians will resist the new government emerging after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad as he again accused the United States and Israel of sowing chaos in the country.
Iran had provided crucial support to Assad throughout Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, which erupted after he launched a violent crackdown on a popular uprising against his family’s decades-long rule. Syria had long served as a key conduit for Iranian aid to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address on Sunday that the “young Syrian has nothing to lose” and suffers from insecurity following Assad’s fall.
“What can he do? He should stand with strong will against those who designed and those who implemented the insecurity,” Khamenei said. “God willing, he will overcome them.”
He accused the United States and Israel of plotting against Assad’s government in order to seize resources, saying: “Now they feel victory, the Americans, the Zionist regime and those who accompanied them.”
Iran and its militant allies in the region have suffered a series of major setbacks over the past year, with Israel battering Hamas in Gaza and landing heavy blows on Hezbollah before they agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon last month.
Khamenei denied that such groups were proxies of Iran, saying they fought because of their own beliefs and that the Islamic Republic did not depend on them. “If one day we plan to take action, we do not need proxy force,” he said.
