News / Turkey

Separatist Kurds kill soldier in southeast Turkey

Monday, 29 August 2016 5:05 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 29 August 2016 5:32 AM ]

Honor guards carry the coffin of a Turkish soldier killed by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the eastern city of Van, during his funeral in Ankara, Turkey, July 11, 2016. (Photo by AP)

At least one Turkish soldier has been killed and five policemen have been injured in separate attacks by members of a separatist Kurdish group in Turkey’s southeast.

Security sources said anonymously that militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) detonated a roadside bomb by remote control as army troopers were attempting to defuse it on a highway outside the city of Hakkari, located 1,026 kilometers (638 miles) east of the capital, Ankara, late on Sunday, killing one soldier.

Three soldiers were also injured in the attack.

Elsewhere, in the southeastern province of Siirt, five policemen were injured in a bomb explosion that struck their patrol car on a road leading to neighboring Sirnak Province.

Separately, two PKK militants turned themselves in to security forces in the Baskale district of Van Province.

Nine PKK terrorists had earlier been killed in the Samanli and Cadikan districts of Hakkari Province during clashes with Turkish military forces. Two soldiers sustained gunshot wounds in those clashes.

In this photo, dated February 25, 2016, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants are seen during a gunfight with Turkish security forces in Nusaybin, southern Turkey.

Turkish military forces have been conducting ground and aerial operations 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.

The 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.

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