(CNN) – Turkey’s interior and defense ministers said the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was behind Wednesday’s attack on Turkey’s National Space Agency headquarters near the capital Ankara. The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.
Kurdish officials later said Turkey had bombed several areas in Syria and Iraq.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said it struck PKK targets in northern Iraq and Syria, according to a Reuters translation of a ministry statement.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which operates in northeastern Syria, said the Turkish military shelled the town of Kobani and Tal Rifa’at, north of Aleppo. SDF media chief Farhad Shami said in a statement late Wednesday night local time that the blast killed two civilians and wounded six others.
Also, the western countryside of Tal Abyad came under another round of brutal shelling,” Shami said.
The US maintains a distinction between the SDF and the PKK. But Türkiye considers the SDF and its People’s Protection Units (YPG), US-backed Kurdish fighters who have fought ISIS, to be part of the PKK.
Meanwhile, in Ira 1, Qamiran Hassan, mayor of Mawad district in the Sulaymaniyah province of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, told CNN that Mount Azos was hit twice by Turkish airstrikes this evening.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken a firm stance against the PKK. He has said his ultimate goal is to eliminate the far-left Kurdish political and extremist organization in Turkey and Iraq, which has been fighting the Turkish government for more than three decades.
Turkey itself has long been unhappy with a strong Kurdish presence in northeastern Syria near the Turkish border. In 2019, Turkey launched a planned military offensive in northeastern Syria with the aim of driving Kurdish forces from the Turkish border.
CNN’s Abel Alvarez, Eyad Kourdi and Hamdi Alkhshali contributed reporting.
