SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Sunday denied that it had killed 13 Turkish citizens it held as prisoners on the Gara Mountain in northeast of Duhok.
The People’s Defense Forces (HPG), the PKK military wing, said some prisoners it was holding, including Turkish intelligence, police and military personnel, had died in airstrikes carried out by Turkey in the Gara region, 50 km northeast of Duhok.
The group denied it had ever hurt prisoners.
“A camp has been attacked in Gara where prisoners of war belonging to the Turkish security forces were held,” the HPG said in a statement.
“The camp was intensively bombed from the air at five o’clock on February 10, followed by a ground attack in which every form of war technology was used,” it added.
Turkey launched a military operation dubbed “Claw-Eagle 2” against the PKK in the Gara region on February 10 to secure its border and find citizens who had been kidnapped previously, according to Turkish defense minister Hulusi Akar.
“The bombardment, which last for three days, and the fierce battles inside and outside the camp resulted in the death of some of the MIT members, soldiers and policemen we had captured,” the group stated.
“The attack was not aimed at liberating the prisoners of war, but at destroying them,” it said. “The only person responsible for the death of these people is Hulusi Akar. He gave the order for such an attack and has no human feelings.”
Akar said earlier that the Turkish military found the bodies of 13 kidnapped Turks executed by the PKK in a cave in the Gara region. Twelve of the kidnapped Turks had been shot in the head and one in the shoulder, Akar added.
Turkish officials vowed to continue the fight against the PKK, and presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin accused other countries of failing to speak out against the militants. He said the 13 abducted people had been civilians.
“[The PKK] attacks Turkish and Iraqi security forces and civilians. It continues its terrorist attacks in northern Syria. The world is silent. This silence is a shameful act of complicity. But we will not remain silent,” he wrote on Twitter, according to Reuters.
In 2017, Turkey’s foreign minister said Ankara was working to bring back citizens he said had been kidnapped by the PKK, after Turkish media reported two Turkish intelligence officers had been captured by the PKK in Iraq.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, launched its armed insurgency in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
In the last two years Turkey’s fight against the PKK has increasingly focused on northern Iraq, where the group has its stronghold in the Qandil mountains on the Iranian border.
