Eymen Coli, a terrorist in charge of units of the PKK's Syrian wing YPG in Syria’s Qamishli, was “neutralized” in the town by Türkiye's National Intelligence Organization (MIT), security sources said Thursday.
Sources said the Syrian terrorist was behind a series of attacks against Turkish troops near the Turkish-Syrian border and joined fellow terrorists in attacks targeting Turkish forces during Türkiye’s Operation Peace Spring in 2019. The cross-border operation Türkiye carried out in cooperation with Syrian opposition forces has driven out PKK terrorists controlling several towns in Syria’s north. The PKK/YPG, however, still retains control of several towns, including Qamishli, thanks to U.S. military support under the guise of the fight against the Daesh terrorist group.
Qamishli was among the targets of Turkish airstrikes earlier this week. MIT has destroyed 50 strategic PKK/YPG terrorist targets in northern Syria, as part of operations launched following terrorist attacks against Turkish troops in northern Iraq, which killed 12 soldiers last week. Intelligence units targeted the terrorist group’s facilities, which produced their gear, explosives and daily necessities.
Field agents detected the PKK’s military, economic and logistics facilities in the Qamishli, Amouda and Ain al-Arab (Kobani) regions. The terrorists operated these facilities under civilian disguise, security sources said, adding that intelligence units prepared an operation to target these facilities with pinpoint accuracy. Around 50 targets were destroyed in the operation, sources said. The strategic facilities destroyed in the operation housed several senior PKK terrorists, according to sources, who noted that the operation made a significant contribution to eliminating threats against Türkiye’s border security.
Türkiye has intensified its airstrikes against the PKK in Iraq and northern Syria in retaliation for the deaths of 12 Turkish soldiers in Iraq over the weekend.
On Friday, Turkish officials said PKK terrorists attempted to infiltrate a Turkish base in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region. They said six Turkish soldiers were killed in the ensuing firefight. The following day, six more Turkish soldiers were killed in clashes with PKK militants.
In response, Ankara launched strikes on dozens of sites associated with the PKK in Iraq and Syria, where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has vowed Türkiye would pay “whatever the cost” to prevent the emergence of a “terrorist structure.”
