FILE - Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan attends a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, on Aug. 31, 2023. Fidan warned on Wednesday Oct. 4, 2023 that Kurdish militants behind a suicide bombing in the Turkish capital face robust retaliation against their group’s positions in Syria and Iraq. (Maxim Shemetov/ Pool Photo via AP, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — Turkey’s foreign minister warned Wednesday that Kurdish militants behind a suicide bombing in the Turkish capital earlier this week would face continued retaliatory airstrikes on positions belonging to the militant group in Syria and Iraq.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack outside the Interior Ministry in Ankara in which one attacker blew himself up and another would-be bomber was killed in a shootout with police. Two police were wounded in the attack.

Turkish warplanes already have conducted two airstrikes against suspected Kurdish militant sites in northern Iraq following the attack, which came as parliament prepared to reopen after a long summer recess. Meanwhile, dozens of people suspected of links to the PKK have been detained in a series of raids across Turkey.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a news conference that Turkish intelligence officials have established that the two assailants arrived from Syria, where they had been trained. He said Turkey would now target facilities in Syria and Iraq belonging to the PKK or its affiliated Kurdish militia group in Syria known as People's Defense Units, or YPG.

“From now on, all infrastructure, superstructure and energy facilities belonging to the PKK or the YPG in Iraq and Syria are legitimate targets of our security forces, armed forces and intelligence elements,” Fidan said. “Our armed forces’ response to this terrorist attack will be extremely clear and they will regret committing such an act."

A Syrian Kurdish commander denied on Wednesday that the Ankara attackers were trained in Syria or crossed into Turkey from Syria.

Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force that controls large parts of northeastern Syria, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that those who carried out the attack in Ankara “did not pass through our territories.”

The Syrian Kurdish-led force is a coalition of several factions, including the YPG.

“We are not a side in the internal conflict in Turkey,” Abdi wrote. He added that Turkey is looking “for a pretext to legitimatize its continuous attacks on our region and to launch a new aggression and this is raising our concerns.”

Abdi said that targeting the infrastructure and economic targets in northeast Syria and cities “is considered a war crime.”

Later on Wednesday, Fidan joined a previously unannounced security meeting with Turkey's interior minister, defense minister, top military commander and intelligence chief, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Iraq’s defense minister Thabet Muhammad Al-Abbasi was scheduled to visit Turkey on Thursday, the agency also reported.

The PKK has led a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and is considered a terror organization by the United States and the European Union. Tens of thousands of people have died since the start of the conflict in 1984.

Turkey’s air force struck suspected PKK sites in northern Iraq, where the group’s leadership is based, hours after the attack on Sunday, and again on Tuesday. Ankara said a large number of PKK militants were “neutralized” in the strikes.

Meanwhile, Turkish intelligence agents killed a wanted Kurdish militant in an operation in Syria, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported Wednesday.

The militant, identified as Nabo Kele Hayri, who also went by Mazlum Afrin, was wanted for his alleged role in planning an attack last year on Istanbul’s main pedestrian street, Istiklal. The attack killed six people.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023