Turkish intelligence revealed the death of a high-ranking member of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), Masoud Jalal Osman, known as Zagros Chakdar, during a recent operation in the Sinjar region of Nineveh Province, northern Iraq.
The news was reported by the Turkish agency “Anadolu,” citing security sources on Friday.
According to the same sources, Osman was involved in forcibly recruiting young individuals from Syria and was also responsible for issuing directives to execute numerous attacks targeting Turkish forces.
Sources revealed that Osman had relocated from Syria to Iraq in 2018, becoming the PKK head in Sinjar.
He was known for employing force to subjugate the local population.
According to the sources, Osman was eliminated by a Turkish intelligence operation while en route to participate in a meeting in Sinjar.
Back in 2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had threatened to carry out a military operation against PKK positions in Sinjar.
However, the operation was never launched due to the tension it caused between Baghdad and Ankara, as well as regional and international opposition to it.
In May, just days after the first round of presidential elections in Türkiye, an attack attributed to Türkiye in Sinjar resulted in the death of three Yazidi militants associated with the PKK.
Observers believed that Erdogan’s victory in a third presidential term, granting him an additional five years in power, could escalate attacks against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) are a major component.
Türkiye views the SDF as an extension of the PKK in northern Syria and fears the expansion of their military influence in northern Iraq. A potential Turkish ground operation in Sinjar to curb their influence has not been ruled out.
