Turkish airstrikes target PKK sites north of Dohuk

Shafaq News/ Turkish warplanes, mounting a series of airstrikes, have hit Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant sites in the Qadisiyah district, north of Dohuk Governorate, according to a security source on Friday.

The source, speaking to Shafaq News Agency, disclosed that villages such as Spindar and Kirkashi, situated at the foothills of Mount Kareh, were targeted by the bombardment.

The airstrikes also struck the village of Serkali, nestled on the slopes of Mount Matin overlooking the Qadisiyah district.

The Turkish Armed Forces have been conducting cross-border military operations against the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Northern Iraq since the 1980s.

In July 2015, a two-and-a-half year-long ceasefire broke down, and the conflict between Ankara and militants of the PKK – recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., Russia, and the European Union – entered one of its deadliest chapters in nearly four decades.

Since that date, the conflict has progressed through several phases. Between roughly 2015 and 2017 the violence devastated communities in some urban centers of Turkey's majority-Kurdish southeast and – at times – struck into the heart of the country's largest metropolitan centers. From 2017 onward, the fighting moved into rural areas of Turkey's southeast.

As the Turkish military pushed more militants out of Turkey, by 2019 the conflict's concentration shifted to northern Iraq and northern Syria.