Turkish warplanes have carried out air strikes on Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) militants near Iraq's Sinjar mountains and in northeastern Syria, a statement from the military said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Turkish military said it has carried out airstrikes against suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq and in northeastern Syria, in a bid to prevent militants from smuggling fighters and weapons into Turkey.
Sinjar Mayor Mahma Khalil said the strikes started at around 2:30 a.m. and killed five members of Iraqi Kurdish forces known as peshmerga, and wounded nine.
The Peshmerga headquarters was close to the site of the attack, the source explained.
Lieutenant General Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of the Peshmerga ministry in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish government said the overnight strike apparently targeted a Yazidi militia allied with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which Ankara, a key ally of the Iraqi Kurdish government, considers a terrorist organisation.
More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria's six-year conflict, which the World Health Organization has called the most risky place for health workers.
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Turkey also hit local armed groups in northern Iraq on Tuesday, killing six members of Kurdish security forces in an apparent accident. Khalil said he was not aware if there were casualties among PKK troops.
"These problems and tensions are all because of the PKK's presence", it said, accusing the PKK and its affiliates of refusing to withdraw from the Sinjar area. The Kurdish group, which has led an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984, is considered a terror organization by Turkey and its allies.
The YPG makes up the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters taking on IS jihadists in Syria.
In November, the Turkish army deployed tanks and armored vehicles to the border town of Silopi, around the time Iraqi forces supported by the United States launched an operation to drive Islamic State from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
In other developments, at least 12 people, including civilians, were killed in an airstrike in northwestern Syria's rural province of Idlib, the Observatory reported.
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