The strikes were carried out on Sunday and Monday in the Turkish provinces of Diyarbakır and Şırnak, as well as an area of northern Iraq where the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has bases, the military said in a statement on Twitter.

The Turkish military has ramped up air strikes in northern Iraq, targeting PKK bases in the Qandil Mountains, close to the Iraq-Iran border, where Ankara suspects high-ranking members of the outlawed group are located.

Ankara has also recently stepped up warnings of a potential ground offensive into the Qandil region, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowing to “drain the terror swamp” there.

“We will continue to topple Qandil on the heads of the separatist terrorist organization,” Erdoğan told an election rally in the southern province of Adana.

The PKK, which has waged an insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey since 1984, is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and European Union.

Turkey has carried out two cross-border military operations in northern Syria since 2016. Since January, Turkey has been waging an offensive against the Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara deems an extension of the PKK, in Syria’s Afrin District.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Tuesday Turkish troops were advancing on Qandil with “determined steps”.

Separately, a Turkish soldier was killed and two wounded on Tuesday by an improvised explosive device planted by the PKK in the southeastern province of Siirt, the governor’s office said.

In the neighbouring province of Şırnak, which borders Iraq, two Turkish soldiers were killed and three others wounded in two separate explosions, a security source said.