Sunday 22 / December / 2024
Istanbul/Diyarbakir: Turkish security forces have killed 5,359 Kurdish militants since the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July, the state-run Anadolu news agency cited President Tayyip Erdogan as saying on Monday.
Erdogan said 355 soldiers, police officers and village guards have been killed in the violence, most of it in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast. Anadolu cited the text of a speech by Erdogan to the Turkish War Academy.
Also on Monday, a local elected official was killed in Turkey's strife-hit southeast after a weekend of violence that also claimed the lives of almost 30 militants and soldiers, according to security sources.
Ibrahim Inco, the village leader in Sarioren in Sanliurfa province, was shot after suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants hijacked his car, the sources said.
They were fleeing after detonating an explosive targeting a military vehicle. Three soldiers were hurt in the explosion, the sources said.
It was the latest violence in southeastern Turkey after the PKK abandoned its two-year ceasefire in July. Months of clashes have ensued, making it one of the deadliest periods in the insurgency's 31 years.
The military said 25 PKK militants were killed in the towns of Nusaybin, Sirnak and Yuksekova in clashes at the weekend.
On Sunday, two soldiers were killed and seven wounded in Nusaybin, a city on the Syrian border, when militants detonated explosives in a building security forces were searching, security sources said. Five soldiers were wounded.
In a separate incident in Nusaybin, which has been under a round-the-clock curfew since March 14, a soldier was killed by sniper fire, and a police officer was killed in a bomb attack.
Nusaybin is the latest city to see security operations as the military tries to root out PKK militants from urban centres where they have erected barricades and dug trenches. The military has also launched dozens of air strikes against PKK bases in northern Iraq.
The opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which dominates much of the Kurdish vote, says hundreds of civilians have also been killed in the military operations which were stepped up in December.
Meanwhile, Israel urged its citizens visiting Turkey to leave "as soon as possible" in an upgraded travel advisory on Monday predicting possible follow-up attacks to the March 19 suicide bombing in Istanbul blamed on IS.
Three Israeli tourists and an Iranian were killed in the Istanbul attack, which prompted the counter-terrorism bureau in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office to issue a generalised "level 3" warning against travel to Turkey.
A statement by the bureau raised this to "level 2" on Monday, signifying what it called a "high concrete threat" that IS or similar groups would attack Turkish tourist attractions. It did not elaborate on what prompted the alert.
A senior diplomatic source said the advisory was intended only for Israeli tourists, not for dual-nationals living in Turkey, and that the update was issued in line with the latest information from the Turkish authorities.
