Turkish shelling kills 55 IS militants in northern Syria; warplanes target Kurdish rebels in Iraq

Ankara: Turkish shelling killed 55 IS insurgents in northern Syria on Saturday evening, military sources said, in retaliation for weeks of rocket attacks on a Turkish border town.
Artillery fire hit the regions of Suran and Tal El Hisn north of Aleppo, as well as Baragidah and Kusakcik, taking out three rocket installations and three vehicles in addition to the killings of the militants, the sources said on Sunday.
Earlier on Saturday, US-led coalition air strikes in Syria killed 48 IS militants, according to a report from state-run Anadolu Agency.
The Turkish border town of Kilis, which lies just across the frontier from Islamic State-controlled territory of Syria, has been regularly struck by rockets in recent weeks.
Kilis is about 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Aleppo, Syria's embattled, biggest city and the biggest strategic prize in a more than five-year-old civil war.
The Turkish military usually responds with artillery barrages into northern Syria, but officials have said it is difficult to hit mobile IS targets with howitzers. Turkish officials have said they need more help from Western allies in defending the border.
So far, about 20 people have been killed and almost 70 wounded in the rocket fire on Kilis, Anadolu said.
Meanwhile, Turkish warplanes also hit targets belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq on Sunday, military sources said, as weekend operations against the insurgents also took place in southeast Turkey.
The F-16 and F-4 2020 aircraft destroyed bunkers, ammunition depots and gun installations in four northern Iraqi regions, including Qandil, where the PKK has camps, the sources said.
The air strikes were launched early on Sunday and the aircraft returned safely to their bases, the sources said.
Turkey has been regularly attacking PKK targets in mountainous northern Iraq since the collapse of a ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish state in July last year.
It has also been clashing with militants in sweeps across the largely Kurdish southeast of Turkey, which has seen some of the worst fighting since the height of the insurgency in the 1990s.
On Saturday, security forces killed a total of 12 militants in the southeastern provinces of Mardin and Sirnak and the eastern province on Tunceli, the military said in a statement.
Explosives were destroyed in those operations and 11 militants were arrested in Hakkari province, the military said.
More than 40,000 people have died since the autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. The group is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.