Turkey launched a barrage of airstrikes late Wednesday against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants and allied groups in Syria and Iraq, in apparent retaliation for an alleged PKK attack on a defense company in Ankara that killed five people. The overnight attacks, which continued for several hours, came just as Turkish authorities were testing the waters for a formula to end the more than four-decade conflict between the Turkish army and the PKK. The timing has spurred speculation that assorted hawks on both sides are seeking to torpedo that effort.

Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said that Turkish forces had struck 47 targets in response to the attack on the headquarters of the Turkish Aerospace Industries, a state-owned defense company that manufactures parts for US F-16 fighter jets as well as drones the Turkish air force has long used to pound PKK targets. Turkey’s interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said both assailants, a man and a woman, had been identified as PKK members. Guler said Turkish forces struck 29 PKK targets in northern Iraq and 18 others in Syria, without offering any further details. Several PKK militants had been “neutralized,” Guler added.

The PKK indicated in a statement on Thursday that it did not know whether its own forces had been responsible for the attack. "It is being said that the [attack] in Ankara was carried out by our forces. If this action was carried out by our forces, then the HPG [the PKK's armed wing] will make an appropriate statement. However, this action has absolutely no connection to the developing process as it is being made to appear."

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said on Thursday that the Turkish strikes had killed 12 civilians, including two children, and wounded 25 people. SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami said Turkish fighter jets and unmanned drones had targeted critical infrastructure in the Kurdish-run zone including power stations, oil wells and bakeries. Local sources say the town of Tell Rifaat, a strategic hub linking regime-held areas to the Kurdish- and Turkish-run zones, was the first to be struck, with Turkish-backed Sunni rebels carrying out artillery strikes as Turkish drones dropped their payloads. The internal security headquarters in Qamishli and water and power stations in Kobani were also struck.