ANKARA

Turkish airstrikes “neutralized” 16 PKK terrorists in a rural part of Cukurca in Turkey’s southeastern Hakkari province on Thursday, the military said on Friday.

In another incident, two other terrorists were shot dead in the southeastern part of Hisar Mountain in Hakkari, the military added.

Turkey's army also said 40 Daesh and six PKK/PYD targets were hit as part of Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria.

The PKK and its Syrian offshoot the PYD are both listed as terrorist groups by Turkey although the U.S. and EU only view the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Operation Euphrates Shield was launched in August to rid the north Syrian border area of terrorists. The campaign has seen both Daesh and the PKK/PYD targeted by the Free Syrian Army and Turkish tanks, artillery and aircraft.

The PKK resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July last year. Since then, PKK terrorist attacks martyred more than 700 security personnel and also claimed the lives of many civilians, including women and children, while nearly 8,000 PKK terrorists were killed in army operations.

Iraq has suffered a devastating security vacuum since mid-2014, when Daesh captured the northern city of Mosul – now the subject of a large offensive to retake it – and overran large swathes of territory in northern and western parts of the country.

Reporting by Zafer Cakmak and Yasemin Kalyoncuoglu : Writing by Handan Kazanci