Special to WorldTribune.com

ANKARA — The Kurdish Workers Party has reported an attack on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Turkey.

The PKK said it attacked an ISIL leader in the Turkish city of Istanbul. In a statement, the youth wing of PKK said the ISIL operative, identified only as Hikmet, was killed.

“Our security forces in the Basaksehir neighborhood have conducted an armed operation against ISIL, killing a gang leader named Hikmet, who was in charge of the organization,” the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement said.

Patriotic Revolutionary Youth issued statements on Aug. 30 and Aug. 31 that disclosed the attack on ISIL. The statements said two additional ISIL agents were also injured in the shooting in Basaksehir.

The Turkish opposition has reported a growing ISIL presence around Istanbul. Parliamentarians cited an August 2014 video that showed a ceremony at an unidentified ISIL training camp outside Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey.

Later, PKK sources said ISIL was recruiting Turks and other nationals for the war in neighboring Iraq and Syria. They said the PKK strike targeted an ISIL recruitment cell that operated in Basaksehir.

“There were five or six people in a car that was leaving the [ISIL] cell house,” a PKK source told Turkey’s Firat news agency. “Two or three gang members were also shot in our precision operation.”

  assassination of leader, Basaksehir, Kurdish insurgents report growing ISIL presence in Istanbul, Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, PKK