Turkish army, PKK fighters exchange fire near residential areas in Duhok: source

Shafaq News/ Violent clashes have erupted between the Turkish military and fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Duhok's northern district Amadiyah, a security source reported on Wednesday.

The source told Shafaq News Agency that a "violent exchange of fire" took place in the vicinity of the Serkali and Sekiri border villages.

"The clashes were very close to the residential areas and the civilians were concerned about the safety of their houses," the source said.

In December 2023, Turkey's defense ministry said that 12 soldiers had been killed in clashes with militants affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party in northern Iraq.

Later, the Turkish Air Force conducted air strikes in northern Iraq and Syria and destroyed 29 targets of the outlawed PKK.

The Turkish Armed Forces have been conducting cross-border military operations against the Kurdistan Workers' Party in Northern Iraq since the 1980s.

In July 2015, a two-and-a-half year-long ceasefire broke down, and the conflict between Ankara and militants of the PKK – recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., Russia, and the European Union – entered one of its deadliest chapters in nearly four decades.

Since that date, the conflict has progressed through several phases. Between roughly 2015 and 2017 the violence devastated communities in some urban centers of Turkey's majority-Kurdish southeast and – at times – struck into the heart of the country's largest metropolitan centers. From 2017 onward, the fighting moved into rural areas of Turkey's southeast.

As the Turkish military pushed more militants out of Turkey, by 2019 the conflict's concentration shifted to northern Iraq and northern Syria.