Turkey says it has netted a high-level Kurdish militant in a covert operation mounted by its national intelligence organization in Iraq’s Yazidi-dominated Sinjar region. Ibrahim Parim of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who went by the codename “Lazer,” was responsible for “logistics,” according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.
Sitting on the border of Kurdish-governed northeast Syria, Sinjar serves as a critical link for PKK rebels moving between Iraq and Syria, according to Turkish authorities. Turkey has targeted the area on several occasions, killing what it claims were high-value PKK targets. The Turkish attacks have sowed panic among the civilian population already traumatized by the Islamic State’s genocidal campaign against the Yazidis in 2014.
