BAGHDAD (AP) — A banned Kurdish militant group on Friday claimed responsibility for an attack on the headquarters of a key defense company in Ankara that killed at least five people. A statement from the military wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, said Wednesday’s attack on the premises of the aerospace and defense company TUSAS was carried out by two members of its so-called “Immortal Battalion” in response to Turkish “massacres” and other actions in Kurdish regions. A man and a woman stormed TUSAS’ premises on the outskirts of Ankara, setting off explosives and opening fire.
Four TUSAS employees were killed there. The assailants arrived on the scene in a taxi that they had commandeered by killing its driver. The assailants were also killed in a subsequent battle with security teams and more than 20 people were injured in the attack.
Turkey blamed the attack on the PKK and immediately launched a series of aerial strikes on locations and facilities suspected to be used by the militant group in northern Iraq or by its affiliates in northern Syria. The attack on TUSAS came at a time of growing signs of a possible new attempt at dialogue to end the more than four-decade-old conflict between the PKK and Turkey's military. Earlier this week, the leader of Turkey’s far-right nationalist party that’s allied with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised the possibility that Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK’s imprisoned leader, could be granted parole if he renounce.
