Turkey launched the "Operation Claw 3" military campaign against fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Friday, crossing over its southern border into the autonomous Kurdistan Region's province of Dohuk, Turkey’s National Defense Ministry announced the following day.

Axar.az reports citing foreign media that the operation aims “to destroy the terrorists and their caves and shelters in the Sinat-Haftanin region,” the statement read.

The PKK has been engaged in a decades-long insurgency against Ankara over Kurdish rights and self-rule since the 1980s in a conflict that has resulted in the death of over 40,000 people on both sides. Headquartered in the Kurdistan Region's Qandil Mountains, the group is designated as a “terrorist organization” by Turkey, the EU, and the US.