Fighting intensified yesterday between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, amid US calls for Turkey to wrap up its military incursion in the region as swiftly as possible.
Explosions and gunfire were reported in and around Hakurk, a stronghold of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), some 20km from the Turkish border.
More than a dozen Turkish warplanes could be seen heading for the area.
The PKK said yesterday it had shot down a Turkish attack helicopter, but there was no independent confirmation.
Turkish troops, backed by air support, moved into northern Iraq on Thursday evening in the largest cross-border offensive in years against PKK hideouts.
The US cautioned its NATO ally that military measures alone could not resolve the Kurdish problem and stressed that the incursion needed to be completed as quickly as possible.
"The shorter the better," US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said yesterday.
Gates also urged Turkey to pursue political and economic measures that would win over its sizeable Kurdish community and erode popular support for the rebels.
"Just using the military techniques are not going to be sufficient to solve the problems," Gates said during a visit to Canberra.
The US is providing its NATO ally with real-time intelligence on PKK movements.
At least 79 PKK fighters and seven soldiers have been killed and numerous rebel hideouts destroyed since Thursday, the Turkish military said.
The PKK said 45 soldiers had been killed.
The Firat news agency, considered to be a PKK mouthpiece, reported air raids and fighting yesterday in the Zap area and said about 5,000 Turkish soldiers and 60 tanks were advancing in nearby Haftanin, close to the border town of Zaho.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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