Murat Karayilan, the acting head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), may have been killed in air strikes carried out by Turkish army last week, local newspaper Today's Zaman reported Monday.
More than 150 PKK rebels were killed in a series of air strikes on the group's targets in Kandil Mountains in northern Iraq on May 1-2, Turkish military forces announced Saturday in a statement.
It said all the targets were successfully destroyed and several senior PKK commanders might be among those dead, but the statement did not identify those commanders.
Turkish media said Sunday that military authorities had received reports that Karayilan was among those dead.
When asking to confirm Karayilan's death, Turkish President Abdullah Gul did not give any comment.
Gul said the operations did not target civilians and Turkey would continue to fight against the PKK.
The Turkish military has periodically bombed and shelled suspected PKK positions in northern Iraq during the past few months. In February it launched an eight-day ground incursion into Iraq.
The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.
(Xinhua News Agency May 6, 2008)
