PKK bombing kills five soldiers in southeastern Turkey

Five Turkish soldiers have lost their lives and eight others sustained injuries in a roadside bomb explosion that targeted a military vehicle in Turkey’s troubled southeast.

Turkish security sources said anonymously that militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) detonated by remote control the bomb they had earlier planted on the side of a road in the Uludere district of Sirnak Province.

The development came only a few hours after PKK members clashes with Turkish army forces as the latter were conducting an anti-terror operation in the rural Lice and Kulp districts in Diyarbakir Province, also in Turkey’s southeast.

One soldier was killed on the spot and three others suffered wounds in the shooting. One of the injured later died at hospital.

An unnamed military official said an operation to arrest the assailants was underway in the region.

Turkish military forces have been conducting ground operations as well as airstrikes against PKK positions in Turkey’s troubled southeastern border region as well as Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region over the past few months.

The campaign began following the July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, which claimed more than 30 civilian lives. Turkish officials held the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group responsible for the act of terror.

PKK militants, who accuse the Ankara government of supporting Daesh, launched a string of supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish security forces after the bomb attack, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.

The Turkish military’s involvement in the anti-PKK operations comes as it is reeling from the aftermath of a failed July 15 coup attempt.

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