Turkey strikes 17 PKK targets in southeast: Army

Turkish war planes overnight carried out a new wave of air strikes against targets of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the southeastern province of Hakkari, the army stated on Aug. 11. 

"Seventeen targets of the separatist terrorists were hit with precision and neutralized" in the Buzul and ?kiyaka mountains of Hakkari province, on the border with Iran and Iraq, the army said.   

The strikes appeared to be in retaliation for a succession of attacks in Turkey on Aug. 10 that killed six members of the security forces, which were believed to be conducted by the PKK.   

Ankara is pressing a two-pronged "anti-terror" offensive against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists and PKK militants following a wave of attacks in the country. But so far the air strikes have overwhelmingly concentrated on PKK militants.    

Turkish war planes have for over two weeks bombed targets of the PKK in their strongholds in the remote mountains of northern Iraq as well as southeastern Turkey.   

On Aug. 10, four Turkish police officers were killed in a roadside bombing in the southeastern ??rnak province while a Turkish soldier was killed in a rocket attack on a military helicopter.   

Meanwhile, in Istanbul a senior police officer in charge of the city's bomb disposal department was killed in clashes that followed a suicide bombing.   

While the government blamed the PKK for that attack, it was claimed by a small radical leftist group, the People's Defense Units (HSB), on its Twitter feed.   

The outlawed Marxist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) - which the government has on occasion linked to the PKK - claimed another attack in Istanbul, a shooting on the U.S....