Kurdish guerrillas execute 13 kidnapped Turkish soldiers, Ankara says
Turkey has denounced that the Kurdish PKK guerrillas have executed 13 Turkish military personnel held hostage since before 2015 in a cave in northern Iraq, and whose release was the objective of the new military operation launched in the area last Wednesday.
Chief of General Staff General Yasar Guler said the 13 people, identified by some media as military and intelligence personnel, had been found shot in the head in a cave in the Iraqi region of Gara, about 30 kilometres from the Turkish border.
Akar's words, reported by the Anadolu Agency, suggest that the execution of the soldiers took place during a rescue operation as part of the offensive launched by the Turkish army in the area on Wednesday, which has now been terminated.
"I wish we had been able to get our 13 citizens out of the region alive. But the killers martyred these unarmed innocents in a massacre," said Defence Minister Hulusi Akar.
Akar pointed out that the cave was located in a difficult-to-access valley protected from aerial bombardment.
According to Turkey, 48 members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an organisation considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, which has its bases in northern Iraq, were killed during the ground and air operations launched on Wednesday.
The dead guerrillas include those who were guarding the Turkish citizens held hostage in the cave. Three Turkish military personnel were also killed during the operation.
The presence in Iraq of Turkish citizens kidnapped by the PKK has long been discussed in various quarters, but there has been little official reference to it.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the war between the Turkish army and the PKK since the guerrillas took up arms in 1984 to demand self-determination for Turkey's estimated 15 million Kurds.
Turkey has regularly bombed northern Iraq for years, something the Iraqi government has denounced as a violation of its territory and airspace.
