Turkey's military said Friday that its warplanes have successfully bombed several suspected Kurdistan Workers' Party or the PKK rebel bases in northern Iraq.
Turkey's state-run news agency Anatolian reported Brigadier General Metin Gurak, a military spokesman, as saying that the attack took place Thursday in northern Iraq's Zap region, which is near the border with Turkey.
Turkey considers PKK to be a terrorist organization, and regularly carries out attacks on PKK targets both in Turkish territory and across the border in northern Iraq.
The tensions in the region escalated recently after PKK rebels based in northern Iraq carried out a cross border attack on a border outpost in southeastern Turkey in October, killing 15 soldiers and injuring 20 others.
Since then, Turkey has launched several cross-border air raids on PKK targets in northern Iraq, and recently the Turkish Parliament extended the government's mandate to order cross-border military strikes against the PKK in northern Iraq by a year.
The PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by most of the international community including the United States and the EU, has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey for more than two decades. It is estimated that at least 37,000 people have died in the violence.
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