Shafaq News / Turkey killed its soldiers captured by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) with a "chemical weapon," said PKK, on Tuesday.
PKK official, Kawa Shekhmous told Shafaq News Agency, “the recent Turkish bombing and airdrop operations failed to liberate its detainees, therefore it tried to kill them using chemical weapon targeting the cave where they are placed….... The Turkish army failed in this mission as well, as some were killed and others wounded.”
Earlier, Turkey accused PKK of executing 13 kidnapped Turks, including military and police personnel, in a cave in Jabal Kara, Duhok Governorate, northern Iraq.
A statement on a PKK website said some prisoners it was holding, including Turkish intelligence, police and military personnel, had died during clashes in the area. The group denied it had ever hurt prisoners.
Turkey launched the military operation “Claw-Tiger 2” against the PKK in northern Iraq’s Kara region, some 35 km south of the Turkish border, on Feb. 10 to “secure its frontier and find citizens who had been kidnapped previously.”
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.
