A drone strike in northern Iraq killed a Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) commander on Friday, Kurdish authorities said, raising the death toll from strikes blamed on Turkey to three. Turkey often carries out ground and air operations in northern Iraq against positions of the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. "Two people were killed and two others wounded while they were picking herbs after Turkish warplanes launched strikes" on a remote village in the mountainous Sheladiz region in Dohuk province in northern Iraq, said district official Razkar Sarki. Local media said the two people killed in the raid were civilians.

Later Friday "a Turkish drone targeted a group of PKK fighters, killing an intelligence commander and wounding his guard in the district of Sinjar" in northwest Iraq, the counterterrorism services of the autonomous Kurdish region said in a statement. Turkey's armed forces rarely comment on their operations in Iraq. On February 20, two civilians were killed in a strike that was also blamed on Turkey, security and health officials said at the time. Over the past 25 years Turkey has operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies consider a "terrorist" group. Both Baghdad and the regional government of the Iraqi Kurdistan region have been accused of tolerating Turkey's military activities to preserve their close economic ties.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)