Three Kurdish fighters killed in Turkey
Three fighters from the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party have been killed in a shootout with the police in the southeastern Turkish city of Van, officials said.
Two fighters were injured and then captured, they said on Thursday. The shootout, which erupted late on Wednesday in a residential neighbourhood, was part of a security operation in the city against the PKK after a policeman was killed at the weekend when PKK fighters opened fire on a police station, Anatolia news agency reported.
Unrest in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast has markedly escalated this year after the PKK called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire in June 2004.
On Wednesday, the group extended a truce it proclaimed last month to 3 October.
The security forces, however, have brushed this aside and clashes in the region continue.
Some 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey as well as the European Union and the United States, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast.