Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) carried out an operation in Iraq’s north and eliminated a "senior" member of the PKK terrorist group, security sources said Tuesday.

Cahit Aktay, codenamed Hüseyin Piran, was the so-called logistics commander of the PKK in the town of Metina and he was supplying weapons and munitions to terrorists preparing for an attack in the region where the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) is carrying out Operation Claw Lock against the terrorists, sources informed.

MIT deployed special agents who tracked Aktay until he met other terrorists for the delivery and eliminated the group in a pinpoint operation, they added.

Aktay was part of a mine attack that killed three Turkish soldiers and two rangers in the eastern Şırnak province in 2016, which put him on MIT’s top priority watchlist and earned him an orange category wanted badge.

He was exclusively assigned by the PKK’s senior command to counter Claw-Lock operations in northern Iraq, where the terrorist group has its headquarters.

He joined the group’s rural ranks in 2008 and moved to northern Iraq’s Qandil region to operate there between 2009 and 2012.

Later, he participated in organizational activities in the Kato/Jirka region until he was made the group’s "logistics commander" in 2015.

As the "commander" of the "Kato Moving Unit," he orchestrated the 2016 attack in Şırnak and was later promoted to "commanding officer" of the Makhmour region in 2018.

In 2019, he became the "finance and logistics commander" of Metina.

The Turkish intelligence agency stepped up its operations against the PKK in Iraq and Syria in recent years as the terrorist group expanded its clout in the two countries neighboring Türkiye. However, the number of terrorists within Türkiye significantly dropped.

In 2022 alone, 23 senior figures of the terrorist group backed by the United States in Syria were eliminated in MIT’s operations in the two countries, while many PKK members were brought to Türkiye.

In its over 40-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States, Britain and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women and children.

The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) also regularly conduct cross-border operations in northern Iraq. In this region, the PKK terrorists have hideouts and bases from which they carry out Türkiye attacks.

Türkiye launched Operation Claw-Lock last year in April to target the PKK terrorist group’s hideouts in the Metina, Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions of northern Iraq, located near the Turkish border. As part of it, hundreds of terrorists have been eliminated.

It was preceded by two operations – Claw-Tiger and Claw-Eagle – launched in 2020 to root out terrorists hiding in northern Iraq and plotting cross-border attacks in Türkiye.

Counterterrorism efforts were intensified both at home, and in Iraq and Syria after the PKK claimed a suicide attack outside the Turkish National Police headquarters in Ankara earlier this month in which one PKK terrorist blew himself up, and another would-be bomber was killed in a shootout with police resulting in two police officers being wounded.