Turkey declares curfew in southeast town
Turkey has declared a curfew in the southeastern town of Silopi after an attack by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants on police there.
Local authorities declared the curfew in Silopi, in Sirnak Province, in from 4:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) in an announcement by loudspeakers from mosque minarets and police vehicles, according to witnesses.
The Kurdish PKK militants targeted an armored vehicle with rockets in the district of Silopi early Tuesday, leaving at least one police officer dead and four others wounded, Anadolu News Agency cited unnamed sources as saying.
According to witnesses, gunfire rang out in the town through the night.
Turkey has recently been involved in a large-scale campaign against the militants in the country’s southern border region. The military has also been conducting offensives against the positions of the group in northern Iraq.
Dozens of militants were killed in separate operations in the provinces of Hakkari, Mardin and Sirnak on Saturday, the Turkish military said.
Seventeen militants were killed during heavy clashes in the Kurdish-populated city of Yuksekova in Hakkari Province east of the capital, Ankara. Elsewhere in the southeastern city of Nusaybin, Turkish soldiers killed six PKK militants.
A ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed last July, and militant attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.
The Turkish military operations against the PKK 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 supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to continue the operations until they either surrender or are “neutralized.”
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