[TABLE]
Turkey has killed almost 100 militants of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in offensives against the PKK over the past four days, while the top generals who are leading military operations in the country’s Southeast vowed not to return to Ankara before accomplishing their mission. The terrorists were killed in the offensives of the past four days on Turkey’s border with Iraq and cross-border operations against PKK hideouts in northern Iraq.
Forty-nine PKK terrorists were killed in the Kazan Valley region near the town of Çukurca in Hakkari province, which borders Iraq, the military said in a statement posted on its website on Saturday, which brought to the total number of PKK terrorists killed since operations were launched last Wednesday to 93. On Wednesday Turkey launched anti-PKK offensives involving some 10,000 troops both in southeastern Turkey and across the border in Iraq. The military operations began hours after 24 soldiers were killed in Çukurca by the PKK in simultaneous attacks, the highest death toll of a single attack on the military since the 1990s.
Turkey’s top commanders, Chief of General Staff. Gen. Necdet Özel and four force commanders who rushed to Hakkari in the aftermath of Wednesday’s PKK attacks, are still in the region to oversee the anti-PKK offensive and have no plans to return to Ankara until the offensive is successfully completed.
Özel is personally commanding the air-backed ground offensive that was launched against the PKK along the border and in northern Iraq.
Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç on Saturday said the top commanders “pledged not to return home before accomplishing the anti-PKK operation.” Clashes with the PKK have killed tens of thousands of people since the PKK took up arms to fight for autonomy in the country’s predominantly Kurdish Southeast in 1984.