by Our Foreign Desk

TURKISH warplanes bombed targets on their own territory yesterday as part of the government’s campaign against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) separatists.

The military said jets had hit 17 PKK positions around Buzul mountain and the Ikiyaka region in Hakkari province, which borders Iran and Iraq.

The Turkish Air Force has been bombing PKK targets in northern Iraq for weeks, but yesterday’s raids were the first on home soil.

The air raids took place the day after the latest in a series of attacks, blamed by authorities on the PKK, killed nine people, including five police officers.

In further violence yesterday, Kurdish rebels attacked an infantry brigade command post in Sirnak province, also in south-eastern Turkey, seriously wounding a soldier who later died in a hospital.

The government broke off peace talks in July with the PKK, whose leader Abdullah Öcalan has been imprisoned since 1999.

The party has been fighting for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority in south-eastern Turkey since 1984, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people.

On July 22, the PKK killed two police in Ceylanpinar, in retaliation for the state’s alleged support for Islamic State (Isis) militants responsible for the horrific bombing of a left-wing students’ gathering in Suruc two days earlier.

Days later, the government launched a bombing campaign against Isis in Syria and, more intensively, the PKK in Iraq.

More than 50 people, mostly police and soldiers, have died since then.

The bombing campaign is ostensibly part of efforts to establish a safe zone in northern Syria for “moderate” rebel factions opposed to Isis.

The hard-line Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group gave its support to the scheme yesterday, saying it was “vital.”

Also yesterday, the US consulate in Istanbul reopened for business, the day after two female members of the banned Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front had opened fire at the heavily protected building.

Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif postponed a visit to Turkey, where he had been scheduled to hold talks with his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu yesterday.

Turkish media reported that Mr Zarif planned to brief Turkish leaders on an Iranian plan to end Syria’s civil war.