Turkey killed top PKK commander in Makhmour drone strike: Intelligence agency

The Kurdish group has not yet commented on that statement. 
A PKK vehicle destroyed by Turkish drone attack in Makhmour camp, May 21, 2022. (Photo: Submitted to Kurdistan 24)
A PKK vehicle destroyed by Turkish drone attack in Makhmour camp, May 21, 2022. (Photo: Submitted to Kurdistan 24)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey has killed a top commander of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Makhmour in southwest Erbil province, the country’s MIT intelligence agency claimed on Monday. 

On Saturday, a car was destroyed by a suspected Turkish drone strike in the refugee camp in Makhmour district, killing the two people inside. Neither local officials nor the PKK leadership disclosed their identities.

However, in a statement, MIT claimed that one of them was Mohammed Erdogan, who it identifies as the head of the militant group’s operations in Kirkuk, Sulaimani, and Makhmour.

The Kurdish group has not yet commented on that statement. 

Another strike on Saturday killed five people in a Hilux pickup truck near Chamchamal, west of Sulaimani province. Local authorities said that three of the passengers were members of the PKK, which is active in that area.

The Turkish-PKK conflict began in 1984 and has left at least 40,000 dead in its wake. 

In April, Turkey launched Operation Claw-Lock against the group, the latest in a series of cross-border air and ground operations in the Kurdistan Region that began in 2019.