Turkish warplanes and Iranian artillery bombarded Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq on Monday, a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) spokesman said.
“Turkish planes and Iranian artillery bombarded Aquwan and the Iranians bombarded Maradu. The bombardment lasted for about one hour starting from 7pm,” the spokesman, Ahmed Denis said.
The spokesman had no immediate word on any casualties.
The fresh bombardment of the remote mountains where the borders of Iraq, Iran and Turkey meet follows talks in Ankara on Dec. 24 between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Iraqi counterpart, Nuri al-Maliki.
In those talks, the two governments agreed to step up cooperation against PKK rebels operating rear-bases in northern Iraq.
Denis criticized the Iraqi position, accusing it of compromising its sovereignty.
“How could they allow a neighboring country to bombard their own land and people?” he asked.
Hours after Maliki’s visit to Ankara, three Turkish soldiers were killed and nine wounded when PKK rebels armed with automatic weapons attacked an army vehicle in the border town of Cizre.
Turkish warplanes then bombed rebel hideouts in Khwakurk and Khnera on Dec. 28.
On the eve of Maliki’s visit, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is himself a Kurd, pledged that both the central government in Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq were determined to stop the PKK using rear-bases in the region.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
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