Ankara defended its actions in northern Iraq on Tuesday, a day after three members of the Kurdish anti-terrorist services were killed in a drone attack that Iraqi authorities attributed to Turkey, AFP reported.

Turkey regularly attacks Turkish-backed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants operating from inside Iraq, but Monday’s drone attack on Iraqi Kurdistan’s Arbat airfield is a rare attack on security forces in the autonomous region’s north.

On Tuesday, the presidency in Baghdad condemned “repeated aggression” by Turkey, announcing that the Turkish ambassador to Baghdad would be summoned.

While not directly claiming Ankara’s military was responsible for the attack, Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement late Tuesday that “it appears that members of the PUK-linked anti-terrorist group were training with PKK and YPG terrorists at the time of the blast. “.

“This latest incident once again confirms the validity of our actions in Sulaymaniyah, where a terrorist organization (Ankara’s name for the PKK and YPG, no) has practically taken the population hostage,” added the ministry, which calls on the central government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government “to fight terrorism honestly and concretely.” (photo: Dreamstime.com)