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Tag: Kurdistan Workers Party

  • Kurdish militants claim responsibility for deadly attack on Turkish defense firm

    Kurdish militants claim responsibility for deadly attack on Turkish defense firm

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    BAGHDAD (AP) — A banned Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed responsibility for an attack on the headquarters of a key defense 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 defense 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. More than 20 people were injured in the attack.

    The woman assailant took her own life by detonating an explosive device after being injured in an exchange of fire at the entrance of the complex, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said. The male attacker hurled hand grenades at approaching security forces, then also detonated himself in the restroom of a nearby building “realizing there was no way out,” the minister said.

    Turkey 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 Turkey’s military.

    Earlier this week, the leader of Turkey’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 organization.

    Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul, said in a message conveyed by his nephew on Thursday that he was ready to work for peace.

    The PKK’s military wing, the People’s Defense Center, said, however, that the attack was not related to the latest “political agenda,” insisting it was planned long before.

    It said TUSAS was chosen as a target because weapons produced there “killed thousands of civilians, including children and women, in Kurdistan.”

    TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civilian and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. Its defense systems have been credited as key to Turkey gaining an upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants.

    On Friday, an Iraqi security official said Turkish warplanes intensified their airstrikes on sites belonging to the PKK and other loyal forces in northern Iraq’s Sinjar district. The intensive bombing targeted tunnels, headquarters and military points of the PKK and the Sinjar Protection Units inside the Sinjar Mountain area.

    A local official and a security official said the bombings killed five Yazidis. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

    The Turkish defense ministry said 34 alleged PKK targets including caves, shelters, depots and other facilities were hit in an aerial operation overnight. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said drones operated by the national intelligence agency have struck 120 suspected sites since Wednesday’s attack.

    The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Thursday that the Turkish warplanes and drones struck bakeries, a power station, oil facilities and local police checkpoints. At least 12 civilians were killed and 25 others were wounded.

    The People’s Defense Center statement claimed there were no casualties among PKK fighters in the airstrikes.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of journalists on his return from a trip to Russia late Thursday that the two TUSAS assailants had infiltrated from Syria, but did not provide details.

    Addressing a defense industry fair in Istanbul on Friday, he said Turkey was determined to stamp out the militant group.

    “Although our pain is great because of our martyrs, our determination to fight against the scoundrels is much greater,” Erdogan said. “We will continue to crush those who think they can make us step back with such treachery.”

    On Friday, Turkish police detained 176 suspected PKK members in operations across Turkey, the Interior Ministry said.

    Police also detained a man who hurled rocks at the entrance of the headquarters of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, DEM, Anadolu reported. DEM party spokeswoman Aysegul Dogan said on the media platform X that the entrance door and windows were broken in the attack.

    The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1980s. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

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    Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser contributed from Ankara, Turkey.

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  • Prosecutors: Paris shooting suspect wanted to kill migrants

    Prosecutors: Paris shooting suspect wanted to kill migrants

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    PARIS — The man suspected of fatally shooting three Kurds in Paris ahead of Christmas weekend told investigators that he had set out that morning aiming to kill migrants or foreigners and then himself, according to prosecutors.

    The 69-year-old man killed three people outside a Kurdish cultural center Friday and wounded three others, and was then disarmed and subdued by one of the injured victims, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Sunday.

    He was detained at the scene and transferred Saturday to psychiatric care. His name hasn’t been released. If he is released from psychiatric care, he faces potential charges of racially motivated murder, attempted murder and arms violations.

    The prosecutor’s office said in a statement Sunday that the suspect told investigators that a 2016 burglary at his home marked a turning point for him, sparking what he called a “hatred toward foreigners that became completely pathological.”

    The shooting in a bustling Parisian neighborhood shook and angered the Kurdish community, and stirred up concerns about hate crimes at a time when far-right voices have gained prominence in France and around Europe.

    The suspect told investigators that the morning of the shooting, he took his weapon first to the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis with the aim of killing foreigners but changed his mind, the prosecutor’s statement said. He then went to the Kurdish center in Paris, which is near his parents’ home.

    He opened fire on one woman and two men there, then entered a Kurdish-run hair salon across the street and fired on three men. One of the wounded men in the hair salon managed to stop him and hold him until police arrived, the prosecutor’s statement said.

    He told investigators he didn’t know his victims, and described all “non European foreigners” as his enemies, the statement said.

    Two of the injured were still hospitalized Sunday with leg injuries.

    Investigators are studying his computer and phone, but haven’t found any confirmed links to extremist ideology, the statement said.

    On Saturday, members of France’s Kurdish community and anti-racism activists joined together in a demonstration of mourning and anger. The gathering was largely peaceful, with marchers holding portraits of the victims.

    Some youths threw objects and set a few cars and garbage bins on fire, and police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. A spokesperson for the Kurdish Democratic Council in France said the violence began after some people drove by waving a Turkish flag. Some of the marchers carried flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

    In 2013, three women Kurdish activists, including Sakine Cansiz, a PKK founder, were found shot dead at a Kurdish center in Paris.

    Turkey’s army has long been battling against Kurdish militants affiliated with the banned PKK in southeast Turkey as well as in northern Iraq. Turkey’s military also recently launched a series of strikes from the air and with artillery against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.

    Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the PKK a terror group, but Turkey accuses some European countries of leniency toward alleged PKK members. That frustration has been the main reason behind Turkey’s continued delay of Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership.

    Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Sunday the violence in the Paris protests was a result of lenience toward the PKK.

    “The snake France fed is now biting them. Everyone should now see the real face of this terror organization,” Akar said.

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    Zeynep Bilginsoy contributed to this report from Istanbul.

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  • Kurds, anti-racism groups gather after deadly Paris shooting

    Kurds, anti-racism groups gather after deadly Paris shooting

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    PARIS — Members of France‘s Kurdish community and anti-racism activists joined together in mourning and anger on Saturday in Paris after three people were killed at a Kurdish cultural center in an attack that prosecutors say was racially motivated.

    The shooting in a bustling neighborhood of central Paris also wounded three people, and stirred up concerns about hate crimes against minority groups at a time when far-right voices have gained prominence in France and around Europe in recent years.

    The suspected attacker was wounded and detained, and transferred Saturday to psychiatric care, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. The 69-year-old Parisian had been charged with attacking a migrant camp last year and released from jail earlier this month. For Friday’s shooting, he is facing potential charges of murder and attempted murder with a racist motive, the prosecutor’s office said.

    Thousands gathered Saturday at the Place de la Republique in eastern Paris, waving a colorful spectrum of flags representing Kurdish rights groups, left-wing political movements and other causes.

    The gathering was largely peaceful, though some youths threw projectiles and set a few cars and garbage bins on fire, and police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. Some protesters shouted slogans against the Turkish government. Berivan Firat of the Kurdish Democratic Council in France told BFM TV that the violence began after some people drove by waving a Turkish flag.

    Most demonstrators were ethnic Kurds of varying generations who came together to mourn the three fellow Kurds who were killed, who included a prominent feminist activist and a Kurdish singer who came to France as a refugee.

    ”We are devastated, really. We are destroyed because we lost a very important member of our community and we are angry. How is this possible?” said demonstrator Yekbun Ogur, a middle school biology teacher in Paris. “Is it normal for a man with a gun to sneak into a cultural place to come and murder people?”

    Demonstrator Yunus Cicek wiped his tears away as spoke of the victims, and his fears. “We are not protected here. Even though I have political refugee status, I don’t feel safe. … Maybe next time it will be me.”

    The shooting shook the Kurdish community and put French police on extra alert for the Christmas weekend. The Paris police chief met Saturday with members of the Kurdish community to try to allay their fears.

    France’s Interior Ministry reported a 13% rise in race-related crimes or other violations in 2021 over 2019, after an 11% rise from 2018 to 2019. The ministry did not include 2020 in its statistics because of successive pandemic lockdowns that year. It said a disproportionate number of such crimes target people of African descent, and also cited hundreds of attacks based on religion.

    Friday’s attack took place at the cultural center and a nearby Kurdish restaurant and Kurdish hair salon. Surveillance video from the hair salon shared online suggests people in the salon subdued the attacker before police reached the scene. The prosecutor’s office would not elaborate on the circumstances of his arrest.

    Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the suspect was clearly targeting foreigners, and had acted alone and was not officially affiliated with any extreme-right or other radical movements. The suspect had past convictions for illegal arms possession and armed violence.

    Kurdish activists said they had recently been warned by police of threats to Kurdish targets.

    In 2013, three women Kurdish activists, including Sakine Cansiz, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, were found shot dead at a Kurdish center in Paris.

    Turkey’s army has long been battling against Kurdish militants affiliated with the banned PKK in southeast Turkey as well as in northern Iraq. Turkey’s military also recently launched a series of air and artillery strikes against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.

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    Boubkar Benzebat in Paris contributed.

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