Turkish warplanes struck Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in
northern Iraq and killed 24 PKK fighters in southeast Turkey on
Thursday, the army said, as the militants launched a car bomb attack on a
military installation in the region.
Thursday night's bombing killed three security force members and
wounded 24 at a security outpost near the southeast's largest city of
Diyarbakir, the military said in a separate statement on Friday,
confirming a report from security sources.
A Reuters witness said the installation suffered severe damage in the
blast on the highway between Diyarbakir and the town of Lice. Security
forces imposed tight security in the area and erected screens to conceal
the site.
The PKK claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on one
of its websites. It said 28 soldiers were killed and 32 were wounded in
the attack. The army and PKK generally give vastly different death tolls
for attacks and clashes. The figures could not be verified.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday 300 members of the security
forces had been killed since the conflict flared up last year,
triggering the heaviest clashes since the 1990s. Erdogan said the PKK
losses were at least 10 times as high.
The pro-Kurdish opposition says hundreds of civilians have also been
killed in the military operations which were stepped up in December.
A round-the-clock curfew was declared in areas of the Silvan district
of Diyarbakir province on Friday, the local governor's office said.
Such curfews have been imposed in the past to pave the way for
operations against PKK militants.
In the latest in a series of air strikes in northern Iraq, Turkish
F-16 and F-4 jets destroyed PKK ammunition depots and shelters in the
Avasin and Basyan areas on Thursday afternoon, the military said.
Security forces also killed 24 PKK fighters on Thursday in the towns
of Nusaybin, Sirnak and Yuksekova in southeast Turkey, near the borders
with Syria, Iraq and Iran, it said.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the
PKK launched its insurgency in 1984. The PKK, which says it is fighting
for Kurdish autonomy, is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the
United States and European Union
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