Kurdish militants claim responsibility for deadly attack on Turkish defence firm

BAGHDAD: A banned Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed responsibility for an attack on the headquarters of a key defence company in Ankara that killed at least five people.

A statement from the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, said Wednesday’s attack on the premises of the aerospace and defence company TUSAS was carried out by two members of its so-called “Immortal Battalion” in response to Turkish “massacres” and other actions in Kurdish regions.

A man and a woman stormed TUSAS’ premises on the outskirts of Ankara, setting off explosives and opening fire. Four TUSAS employees were killed there. The assailants arrived on the scene in a taxi that they had commandeered by killing its driver. The assailants were also killed in a subsequent battle with security teams and more than 20 people were injured in the attack.

Turkiye blamed the attack on the PKK and immediately launched a series of aerial strikes on locations and facilities suspected to be used by the militant group in northern Iraq or by its affiliates in northern Syria.

The attack on TUSAS came at a time of growing signs of a possible new attempt at dialogue to end the more than four-decade-old conflict between the PKK and Turkiye’s military.

Earlier this week, the leader of Turkiye’s far-right nationalist party that’s allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s imprisoned leader, could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands his organisation.

Ocalan, serving a life sentence on a prison island near Istanbul, indicated his willingness to work for peace in a message relayed

by his nephew.

The PKK’s military wing, the People’s Defence Centre, claimed an attack on TUSAS was unrelated to current politics, stating it was pre-planned due to the company’s role in producing weapons that have killed civilians in Kurdistan.

On Friday, Iraqi officials reported intensified Turkish airstrikes on PKK sites in northern Iraq’s Sinjar district, killing five Yazidis.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces noted that Turkish strikes also hit civilian areas, resulting in at least 12 deaths

and 25 injuries.