Türkiye’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has eliminated a top ringleader of PKK terrorist group in an operation in northern Iraq’s Makhmour region, security sources said Friday.

Azad Akıncı was eliminated in a precision strike after MIT obtained information about his location from news portals, sources said.

He was a red-category wanted terrorist and the so-called leader of the PKK’s Makhmour Camp which sits 160 kilometers (99.42 miles) from the Turkish border, they added.

Akıncı was active in a high school youth association led by the PKK in 2006 before being arrested in 2008 on charges of "committing crimes, spreading propaganda and operating on behalf of a terrorist organization" in 2008. He was among other PKK members who participated in a hunger strike in a penitentiary in the southeastern Batman province.

In December 2008, he began managing a so-called patriotic revolutionary youth association in the eastern Siirt province and eventually became its leader for nationwide branches in 2011.

Three years later, he managed logistics for the PKK in Iraq’s Metina region and joined the PKK’s so-called Youth Congress in Makhmour in 2016.

After serving as a so-called leader for the East Kurdistan Youth Association (KCR) in Iran in 2017, Akıncı became the PKK’s so-called general secretary in Makhmour last year.

In its nearly 40-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the U.S. and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.

The conflict with the PKK was long fought mainly in rural areas of southeastern Türkiye but is now more focused on the mountains of northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)-administered region, where the PKK militants have their headquarters in Qandil.

Türkiye has since 2019 conducted a series of cross-border operations in northern Iraq against the PKK, dubbed "Claw." Defense Minister Yaşar Güler said recently that the ongoing Operation Claw-Lock, launched in April 2022, would be completed before the winter to sever the ties between Syria and Qandil.

The aim is to wipe out the PKK from the immediate Turkish borders and create an approximately 40-kilometer-deep security corridor along the Iraqi and Syrian borders.

Both Turkish intelligence and the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) have since ramped up strikes on the "terror corridor" in the region, indicating a wider offensive may already be underway.

The Defense Ministry on Friday said a total of 19 PKK terrorists were eliminated in airstrikes between Sept. 7 and 9 in northern Iraq.

Security forces eliminated 10 PKK terrorists in Gara, six more in Hakurk and another three in Qandil regions, the ministry said.

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

Ankara and Baghdad have been at loggerheads over Ankara's cross-border military operations against the PKK in northern Iraq.

Iraq has said the operations are a violation of its sovereignty, but Ankara says they are needed to protect itself.

Baghdad in March outlawed the PKK and agreed in August to a military cooperation that will see joint training and command centers against the terrorists but Ankara wants Iraq to fully recognize it as a terrorist organization.

The PKK relies on support from a party operating in the KRG-controlled region in Iraq as Baghdad and the KRG has tightened measures against the group, including a ban by Baghdad. In Syria, it boasts support from the United States, under the pretext of fighting against Daesh.