(Los Angeles Times) Jeremiah Bailey-Hoover and Patrick J. McDonnell - Turkish war planes on Wednesday unleashed some of the heaviest bombing to date on Kurdish rebel strongholds in Turkey and Iraq, striking half a dozen targets linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Last week, Ankara announced with great fanfare that it was joining the U.S.-led international coalition against the Islamic State. But Turkey has focused its firepower since then not on the Islamic extremists but on the PKK, whose allied forces have been at the vanguard of the fight against the Islamic State. Turkey's push for a "safe zone" in northern Syria in cooperation with the U.S. is designed to thwart Kurdish militia fighters from extending their control of the Syrian side of Turkey's southern border, Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the Kurdish-oriented People's Democratic Party, told the BBC. "Turkey doesn't intend to target IS with this safe zone. The safe zone is intended to stop the Kurds, not IS."
2015-07-31 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive