News / Turkey

Turkey clashes leave three security forces, two civilians dead

Tuesday, 05 January 2016 2:20 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 05 January 2016 3:09 AM ]

Turkish police carry the coffin of a killed police officer as others salute during his funeral following clashes between Turkish forces and Kurdish militants in the Sur district of Diyarbakir, January 4, 2016. (AFP)

Three security forces and two civilians have lost their lives in a fresh wave of clashes in Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir as Ankara escalates the crackdown on members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group.

A soldier was killed in a gun battle in the Sur district of Diyarbakir on Monday hours after a member of a special police unit was shot dead in the same district, security sources said.

Late on Sunday, a soldier was also killed in a suspected PKK bomb attack in Sur. In another Sunday incident, a 35-year-old mother of three lost her life and another person was injured after a mortar shell hit their house. In the town of Silopi, east of Diyarbakir, a man was shot dead and his wife and another relative were injured when their home came under attack.

Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in recent months with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledging that his government will do its utmost to root out the PKK, an outlawed group that has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since 1980s.

The Turkish raids against the PKK began in the wake of the last July bombing that left 30 people dead in the southern town of Suruc. Ankara blamed the bomb attack on Daesh terrorists. Following the bombing, the PKK, which accuses the government of backing Daesh in Syria, began targeting Turkish security forces in what is viewed as reprisal attacks.

Since mid-December 2015, curfews have been imposed in the towns of Silopi and Cizre in Sirnak province as part of the army operations against PKK militants, prompting angry reactions from the residents of the Kurdish-majority areas.

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