Turkey Launches Fresh Offensive Against Kurdish Factions

Even as Turkey continues to be roiled by the aftermath of the unsuccessful coup of 15 July, the air force has been ordered to resume bombing attacks on armed Kurdish factions in the country’s southeast as well as over the border in northern Syria and Iraq. Attacks on Turkish security and military posts in southeast Turkey killed 12 people this week, prompting the regime in Ankara to order fresh strikes.

An interim report was released Thursday by a US Congressional committee investigating the US military Central Command’s prosecution of operations against the Islamic State (IS) terror militia. The report included harsh criticism of CENTCOM, saying among other things that intelligence analysts had deliberately misled Congress about the threat from IS and exaggerated the success of CENTCOM’s efforts to counter that threat.

The international effort to isolate Israel and impose a campaign of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the Jewish State suffered another defeat this week when members of Knesset signed a memorandum of understanding on deepening cooperation with their counterparts in Uruguay’s capital of Montevideo. A similar agreement was signed earlier in the week with lawmakers from Paraguay and the MKs will end their Latin American tour by meeting with Argentinian lawmakers in Buenos Aries early next week. A separate delegation was in Taiwan this week for a friendly visit with lawmakers there.