While Turkey remains silent over claims that two Turkish nationals working for the national spy agency MIT are being held by Kurdish rebels, a news agency with access to the group known as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has published fresh allegations about the affair.

Firat News reported that the two men were in charge of running a network of spies in Iraqi Kurdistan to monitor the PKK’s activities. Turkish authorities have been pushing for their release without success, Firat claimed.

The PKK leadership is based in the Qandil Mountains on the Iran-Iraq border but maintains a presence in Makhmur and Sinjar. It also moves unhindered in the Sulaimaniyah region, which is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the second most influential party in Iraqi Kurdistan.

According to the agency, the pair carried diplomatic passports and reported directly to the head of Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan. They supposedly had his blessing to either abduct or assassinate senior PKK figures. Firat News reported they were captured by the PKK together with several of their local informants on Aug. 3 in the Dukhan area of Sulaimaniyah. On Aug. 28, a senior PKK leader asserted that two Turkish intelligence officials who were plotting to kill senior PKK leaders were in PKK custody. Despite Turkey's silence on the news carried by the unabashedly pro-PKK outlet, the prevailing consensus is that the Turkish government would have denied the men were being held by now if the reports were false.