The Turkish army have withdrawn in several areas in northern Iraq where it has been conducting a cross-border operation, the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced on Monday.
According to the People’s Defence Forces (HPG), the Turkish army have suffered large losses as a result of its military operations in northern Iraq (southern Kurdistan), but those casualties have been hidden from the Turkish public.
The Turkish army used all the war technology at its disposal for eight months, “trying to keep its air-dropped soldiers on the ground and tried to break the guerrillas’ superiority,” the HPG said in a statement. “The resistance areas were bombed countless times and chemical weapons and prohibited bombs were systematically used thousands of times to achieve results,” it said.
Due to resistance of the Kurdish fighters, the Turkish military have chosen to withdraw from an area around a village in the east of Zap, and all areas bar two on its west, the HPG claimed.
