Turkey late on Wednesday launched air strikes against Kurdish targets in northern Iraq and Syria, hours after Ankara said a terrorist attack on a state aerospace company killed five people and wounded nearly two dozen.
Turkish air forces struck 32 targets associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a separatist group that has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey, along with “other terrorist elements”, the defence ministry said.
The military operations came after an attack on a sprawling Turkish Aerospace Industries’ (TAI) industrial campus on the outskirts of Ankara, Turkey’s capital.
Interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said it was “very likely” that the PKK, which is recognised as a terrorist group by the US, EU and others, carried out the assault. Assailants had struck the TAI site with bombs and gunfire, according to Turkey’s state Anadolu news service.