PKK says arrested two Turkish intelligence officers in Iraq
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PKK militants greet their comrades as they arrive in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group says it has arrested two Turkish intelligence officials, who were planning to assassinate one of its prominent leaders in Iraq.
According to reports, Diyar Xerib, a leading member of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) - a PKK-affiliated transnational body - said that they had captured two Turkish nationals working for the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) last week, refraining from identifying them.
“Turkey should be glad we haven’t shown the people we captured in the media yet,” he told the Roj news channel. “We could just parade them to the press now and publish their names.”
The two MIT officers had reportedly been staying in the city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and had been planning to assassinate a senior PKK figure.
Ankara has not made any comments about the reported arrests.
The news comes following the expulsion of Behroz Galali, the Ankara representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a Sulaymaniyah-based Iraqi Kurdish party, from Turkey.
The PUK is seen as being somewhat closer to the PKK than Iraqi Kurdistan’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
Xerib, however, wondered why PUK had been implicated.
He further said MIT operatives “wanted to turn Sulaymaniyah into a city of chaos and the center of terror attacks against PKK administrators.”
EA
