TMCnet News
Four soldiers killed in clash with PKK(Turkish Daily News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Four Turkish soldiers were killed Friday in fighting during a military operation against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Southeast of the country, officials said The clash occurred in the province of THORNyrnak, which borders Iraq and Syria, Education Minister Huseyin Celik, who was visiting the region, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency. Local officials said the fighting erupted in a rural area near the town of Guclukonak during a sweep that began Thursday against the PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. Celik was speaking at the opening ceremony of a school in THORNyrnak's Ydil town as part of government efforts to boost education in a region plagued by chronic poverty and years of conflict between the PKK and the army. "We came here to open a school ... and we are very upset at such news," he said. "We condemn terrorism." Unrest in the Southeast increased noticeably this year after the PKK called off a five-year unilateral cease-fire in June 2004. Officials in THORNyrnak said earlier this week that police had seized about one kilogram of plastic explosives and detained two PKK militants and seven alleged accomplices in an operation that foiled planned bomb attacks in the town of Silopi. A quarter of the explosives and a detonator were found in the home of a Silopi town councilor identified by the media as town deputy mayor Abdulaziz Coban. Tensions in the Southeast escalated last month with a wave of violent protests and riots over allegations that members of the security forces were involved in a bomb attack on a bookstore owned by a former PKK member in the province of Hakkari, which borders THORNyrnak. The attack killed one person and the riots that followed claimed another five lives, rattling the Ankara government at a time when it is under pressure to demonstrate its respect for democracy and the rule of law. The European Union has said the investigation into the bombing will be a test for the supremacy of law in Turkey, which opened membership talks with Brussels on Oct. 4 |