Clashes in east Turkey leave 7 PKK fighters dead
Seven suspected members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have died in fresh clashes with Turkish forces in the eastern part of the country, the army says.
In a statement on Thursday, the Turkish army said four PKK fighters were killed in the overnight shoot-out that broke out after the group attacked a command post in the district of Silopi in the southeastern Sirnak Province, close to the border with Syria and Iraq.
Another PKK attack on Wednesday on a military base and police station in the district of Diyadin in the country’s eastern Agri Province and ensuing clashes with Turkish forces also left another three PKK members dead, the army added.
Meanwhile, the pro-PKK Firat news agency reported that two of the casualties in Agri were teenagers who were working at a bakery when Turkish troops opened fire on nearby buildings.
Dirayet Tasdemir, a lawmaker from the People's Democratic Party (HDP), Turkey’s main Kurdish party, also denounced the incident as a "clear execution."
Turkey recently launched airstrikes against the PKK bases in northern Iraq as well as alleged positions held by the Takfiri Daesh terrorists in Syria after a deadly bomb attack which left 32 people dead in the southwestern town of Suruç, across the border from the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. After the attack, the PKK killed two Turkish police officers, saying they were cooperating with Daesh.
The air raids are reportedly to be mainly targeting the PKK positions.
The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s. A shaky ceasefire between Anakara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared as null following the Turkish military campaign.
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