News / Turkey

PKK bomb attack hits SE Turkey, kills 7 soldiers

Thursday, 04 October 2018 9:47 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 04 October 2018 9:51 AM ]

Turkish soldiers patrol in the town of Aliaga, Izmir Province, July 18, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

At least seven Turkish soldiers have lost their lives in a bombing by Kurdish militants that targeted a military convoy in the country's southeastern Batman Province.

The local governor's office said the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had detonated a roadside improvised explosive device (IED) when a military convoy was passing through Batman's Gercus district on Thursday.

It also noted that an operation had been launched to capture the perpetrators of the bomb attack.

Turkish security sources said that the incident had left seven Turkish troops dead and three others injured.

A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants in 2015 in the wake of a large-scale Turkish military campaign against the group.

The Turkish air force has been carrying out operations against PKK positions in the country’s troubled southeastern border region as well as in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Separately on Thursday, the Turkish military said that a total of 13 PKK militants had been killed in air raids on Iraq's northern Avasin-Basyan and Zap regions as well as Turkey's southeastern Siirt Province over the past two days.

Turkey, along with the European Union and the United States, has declared the PKK a terrorist group and banned it. The militant group has been seeking an autonomous Kurdish region since 1984.

More than 40,000 people have been killed during the three-decade conflict between Turkey and the autonomy-seeking militant group.

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