KURDISH resistance fighters claimed to have killed six Turkish soldiers in a revenge attack on Thursday, as battle continues to rage in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

A Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) unit launched what it described as “a revolutionary offensive” against a Turkish military vehicle in Colemerg, causing the deaths and injuring two other soldiers.

In a statement, the PKK said that the operation was “carried out in retaliation for six of our comrades who were martyred with chemical weapons in Gry Sur in a brutal attack […] by the Turkish occupation army.”

Turkish jets continued to pound Kurdish villages as part of a four-month military operation codenamed Operation Claw Lightning.

Ankara’s forces have been accused of a number of chemical attacks and a litany of war crimes in the region, with air strikes hitting a hospital and the Makhmour refugee camp, home to at least 12,000 Kurds.

While Ankara claims to be targeting PKK positions, it has frequently shelled Kurdish villages, forcing more than 1,500 people to flee their homes, according to the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Locals claim that they are being forced out in an ethnic cleansing operation and being replaced by Turkish-allied jihadists, who are being shipped in from the battlefields of Syria and Libya.

Kurdistan Communities Union spokesman Zagros Hiwa told the Morning Star that Turkey’s bombing campaign aims to “frighten [Kurdish] villagers and coerce them to leave their land.

“The ultimate aim of Turkey is to totally depopulate all the villages across a [24-mile-deep] area along the Turkey-Iraqi border,” he said.

“Turkey has been unable to break the resistance of the Kurdistan freedom fighters. Therefore, it seems that Turkey wants to take revenge on the civilian population, especially the villagers.”