News / Turkey

Turkey military says 14 militants killed in southeast Turkey

Monday, 22 February 2016 1:13 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 22 February 2016 1:12 PM ]

This image taken on January 22, 2016, shows a funeral procession for Kurdish militants killed by Turkish forces in the city of Diyarbakir (AFP Photo)

Turkey's military says it has killed 14 Kurdish militants in its ongoing crackdown on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants in the southeast of the country.

The army said in a statement on Monday that four PKK militants were killed on Sunday in the Sur district of Diyarbakir Province and 10 others were killed on Sunday in the Idil district of Sirnak Province.

Both regions are under round-the-clock curfew as Turkish military forces continue to crack down on a militancy in the Kurdish-dominated areas in the south and southeast of Turkey.

Violence has surged in Turkey’s Kurdish regions following the breakdown of a two-year ceasefire between Turkish security forces and the PKK last July.

The PKK, which is fighting for autonomy for Turkey's large ethnic Kurdish minority, has sealed off entire districts of some towns and cities in the southeast, prompting security forces to step up their operations.

Rights groups and locals have voiced growing concern about the civilian death toll amid the military operations in the past few months. The pro-Kurdish HDP party puts the toll at nearly 160.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting the Turkish military operations.

In its Monday statement, the army added that the bodies of five PKK militants, thought to have been killed earlier, had been found during search operations in Cizre, a border town that was the focus of military operations for weeks.

This image shows people waiting behind a Turkish police barricade during a curfew near the Sur district of Diyarbakir on February 3, 2016 (AFP Photo)

The army said it had discovered a large cache of home-made explosives, hand grenades, rifles and ammunition during the search.

The PKK - considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union - launched its militancy against the Turkish state more than three decades ago and more than 40,000 people have since been killed in the conflict.

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