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Turkey’s defense ministry has said two PKK terrorists were neutralized by the nation’s air force after they were detected by intelligence officers in the Gara region of northern Iraq.

In a tweet on Tuesday morning, the Turkish Ministry of National Defence announced that, through the coordinated work of the Turkish Armed Forces and the National Intelligence Organization, they had been able to identify the whereabouts of two PKK terrorists.

The ministry said in a tweet that the two terrorists were successfully “neutralized” by the Air Force, and it attached a video appearing to document the operation. 

Teröristler için hiçbir yer güvenli değil! Türk Silahlı Kuvvetlerimiz ve Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatımızın koordineli çalışması sonucu Irak’ın kuzeyindeki Gara bölgesinde tespit edilen 2 PKK’lı terörist, Hava Kuvvetlerimizin başarılı hava harekâtı ile etkisiz hâle getirildi. pic.twitter.com/uwpjCZ2nbp

The PKK, who fight for an independent Kurdistan, have been battling Ankara since 1984, in a war that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

On Saturday, the Turkish Air Force carried out a strike on a refugee camp in northern Iraq, killing at least three people. The strike came just days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey would “clean up” the Makhmour refugee camp, which it says provides a haven for Kurdish militants, unless the UN did it first. 

The camp also sits in the Erbil Governorate, near the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan Region. The Kurds were an important ally to the West and the US in the fight against Islamic State. The region still hosts a US military base.

Turkish airstrikes also hit the camp in 2020, but there were no reports of casualties.

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