Turkish warplanes bombard Bradost, in Kurdistan Region

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - Turkish warplanes on Wednesday continued to bombard perceived PKK targets in Kurdistan Region's Bradost area in northern Erbil Province, near the border with Turkey.

A Kurdistan 24 reporter in Bradost said Shikew, Malemala, Robe Rola, Gire Shivan, Khwakurk, and Geliye Resh villages witnessed intense bombing overnight.

There was no information available regarding casualties among either civilians or members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a group that has been fighting a decades-long insurgency with the Turkish state over Kurdish rights and self-rule.

Airstrikes Turkey conducts have killed dozens of civilians in mountainous areas of northern Erbil and Duhok Provinces since Ankara reignited its war on the PKK in mid-2015, following the collapse of peace talks between them.

The Turkish army maintains a ground invasion, in some places up 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) deep into the Kurdistan Region.

In May, Turkey announced that it had constructed a military outpost in Khwakurk to use as a base from which to launch attacks against the PKK. Those attacks, however, have caused the injury and death of local residents unaffiliated to the group and have forced villagers from the area to flee for their lives. Earlier, in March, Turkish jets struck and killed four people who were celebrating the Kurdish new year of Newroz in Erbil's Choman district.

Both Choman and Bradost are near the Qandil mountain range sprawling along the Iraq-Iran border where the PKK has its headquarters.

Meanwhile, in the Black Sea region of northern Turkey, officials announced the killing of high-ranking PKK commander Baris Oner, codenamed "Tarik, the Turk," and another fighter from Iranian Kurdistan in the district of Kurtun.

Oner was among the figures most wanted by Ankara, said the Governor of the Gumushane Province, where Kurtun is located and military operations against the PKK continue.

The Black Sea is a mountainous region of Turkey with lush forests and a past of leftist militancy and is the only non-Kurdish area where PKK fighters, some of whom are Turkish or hail from other minorities, operate.

Editing by John J. Catherine