Two Turkish police killed in southeast
Two Turkish police officers have been killed in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast.
The Dogan news agency said on Friday that the police forces were killed during operations to push back militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the town of Cizre and Sur District, located in the two provinces of Sirnak and Diyarbakir, respectively.
The report said the first policeman was killed in Cizre late on Thursday when he and a group of colleagues came under a rocket attack. The officers were reportedly trying to break down barricades set up by the PKK militants.
Dogan said a remote-controlled bomb was detonated on Friday in Sur, killing a second police officer.
Since late July 2015, Turkey’s southeastern regions have witnessed a spike in violence amid heavy confrontations between army forces and the PKK, an outlawed group that have been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since 1980s.
On July 20, a bomb attack in the southern Kurdish-majority town of Suruc claimed more than 30 lives. The Turkish government blamed it on the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group. After the bombing, the PKK, accusing the government of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.
Ankara’s military has also been involved in an offensive against positions of the Kurdish group in neighboring Iraq.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that the operations in southeast will continue unabated, adding that more than 3,000 PKK members have been killed in 2015 in the unprecedented fighting.
“Our security forces are continuing to cleanse every place of terrorists, in the mountains and in the cities, and will continue to do so,” Erdogan said in reference to the PKK members.
Critics of the operation, including the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), say all those killed in the crackdown are not militants, updating a list of names showing that civilians have also been among the victims.
Most of the casualties have come in the towns of Cizre and Silopi, Sirnak Province. Both areas have been under a 24-hour curfew since December 14, 2015.
Turkey to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at ICJ
Turkish kung fu fighter Akyuz under fire for displaying Palestinian flag
UN experts urge Israel to allow Freedom Flotilla’s ships to safely reach Gaza
Colombia to cut diplomatic ties with Israel over genocide in Gaza
VIDEO | Gazans mourn over bodies of loved ones at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah
VIDEO | Taliban: No one allowed to use Afghanistan to attack other countries
1,000 Palestinian workers from Gaza 'missing' in occupied lands: NGOs
US police nab 300 pro-Palestine students in New York
Israel marshalling Pahlavi monarchists in pro-genocide demos in London
UN committed to peace ‘based on end to Israeli occupation’
Iran has right to respond to any Israeli aggression: UN envoy
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website
