MOSCOW,— Turkey’s airstrikes overnight to April 25 on areas of Iraq and Syria along the border trigger most serious concerns in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, Russian TASS agency reported.

“As the Turkish side declares, the strikes targeted positions of armed units of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Syrian Democratic Forces with the close to the PKK Democratic Union Party at the head,” the ministry said, adding that some 70 Kurdish fighters were reportedly killed.

“Such moves trigger most serious concern in Moscow. We are talking about actions by Turkish military against Kurdish forces that really stand against terrorist groups, first of all Islamic State, on the ground,” the ministry said.

“In conditions when completion of a war against terrorism in Iraq and Syria is still a long way off, such actions definitely discourage consolidation of anti-terrorist efforts, escalating the already tense situation,” the ministry said,

“The fact that Turkish airstrikes were conducted on the territory of sovereign states in bypass of their legitimate governments cannot but cause concern. We consider these actions inadmissible, running counter to the founding principles of inter-state relations,” the ministry said.

As a result of Turkish shelling on Tuesday, 20 members of Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) were killed in Syrian Kurdistan, while in the Sinjar region of Iraq a local PKK-affiliated Yazidi force as well as five Peshmerga fighters mistakenly were killed.

In total Turkish warplanes hit 39 suspected positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in a one-hour aerial bombardment on the mountains of Sinjar and Karacok.

Both Russia and the United States support the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD party and it military wing of YPG.

U.S regards the Kurdish PYD and its powerful military wing YPG which is part of SDF, as key ally against Islamic State and the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and has provided them with arms, air support as well as the military advisers. The Kurdish militia has seized swathes of Syria from IS.

Turkish foreign minister said Wednesday that Ankara has informed the United States and Russia before launching strikes against Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkey will resume its military operations in Iraq’s Sinjar and northern Syria “until the last terrorist is eliminated.”

“We are obliged to take measures. We must take steps. We shared this with the U.S. and Russia and we are sharing it with Iraq as well,” Erdogan said during an interview with Reuters.

Erdogan said the operation was coordinated with Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic party KDP leader Massoud Barzani

“It is an operation that Massoud Barzani has been informed about,” he added.

The Turkish military operation was “absolutely not an operation against the Peshmerga,” Erdogan added, noting that he regretted the death of several Kurdish Peshmerga who were also based in Sinjar and who were killed as a result of Turkish airstrikes on Tuesday morning in the area.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the resulting conflict since then.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.

Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, tass.com | Agencies | Ekurd.net

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