Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated a so-called ringleader of the PKK/YPG terrorist group plotting a suicide bomb attack in a precision strike in northern Syria.

Hezal Belge, code-named "Jinda Gundikramo," was the head of PKK/YPG’s so-called women’s branch in the Amude region, security sources said Tuesday. She was placed on MIT’s priority target list for her plan to carry out a suicide bomb attack in Türkiye.

PKK/YPG executives accepted her plan, but Turkish security forces discovered it. Many of her attempts were thwarted by Türkiye’s active preventative measures, and sources said she was forced to postpone her plans every time.

Wanted by Türkiye as a grey-listed terrorist, Belge organized Syrians to recruit them to the PKK/YPG’s military wing, YPJ, sources said.

She joined the terrorist group’s rural ranks in 2004 and served as a middling ringleader in northern Iraq for many years.

In 2015, the PKK/YPG executives assigned her to lead PKK/YPG’s cadres in a prison in Derik, a district of eastern Mardin province.

Later, she moved to the group’s Syrian field and operated as a "manager" in Derik, Rumeylan and Qamishli in Syria.

In 2021, Belge was injured in the head during clashes in Qamishli and treated in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah region.

Last year, she was named the head of PKK/YPG’s Qahtanite branch before she became the head of the group’s operation in the Amude region, sources said.

The PKK/YPG has exploited the power vacuum during the Syrian civil war to occupy swathes of oil and gas-rich land and create a self-styled entity in northeastern Syria. The terrorist group has also found a major ally in the U.S. against Daesh and justifies its presence as a frontier against remnants of Daesh.

Türkiye continues to stress that the YPG is an arm of the PKK, which has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children, infants and the elderly, in its 40-year-long terror campaign.

The Turkish intelligence and army, which has troops in northern Syria, regularly carries out strikes in PKK/YPG-held areas.

Türkiye controls two large strips of territory along the border after expelling PKK/YPG forces in successive campaigns. Ankara says it aims to create a security strip along its Syrian and Iraqi borders and sever the ties between the YPG and PKK strongholds in northern Iraq’s Qandil region.

Defense Minister Yaşar Güler has said an ongoing operation launched in northern Iraq in April 2022 would be finalized before the winter. Turkish airstrikes have ramped up in the region since.

Similarly, on Monday evening, the Defense Ministry said four more PKK/YPG terrorists were eliminated in northern Syria near the Turkish border and another six in northern Iraq.

PKK is not recognized as a terrorist group in Iraq but is banned from launching attacks on Türkiye from Iraqi soil.

The federal government in Baghdad outlawed the PKK as a banned organization in March and, in August, agreed to a military cooperation deal with Ankara that will see joint training and command centers set up in the fight against the terrorists.

Türkiye also wants Iraq to fully recognize the PKK as a terrorist group.