DIYARBAKIR (Turkey), Oct 8: Turkey’s government met on Monday to discuss fresh measures to tackle Kurdish rebels after Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgents killed 15 soldiers in the past two days.

The deaths, 13 of them in an ambush on Sunday in the southeast Sirnak province bordering Iraq, were the worst losses the army suffered since 1995 in its 23-year fight against the separatist PKK.

The group is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey and most of the international community.

One soldier was killed in a clash with the rebels on Saturday in Baskale, near the Iranian border, and another early on Monday in a remote-controlled landmine explosion near Lice, in Diyarbakir province.

Sunday’s attack came after 12 people, mostly civilians but including anti-PKK Kurdish “Village Guard” militiamen, were gunned down in an ambush on a minibus in Sirnak province on Sept 29. The attack was blamed on PKK guerillas.

The last time the Turkish army lost as many men in such a short time was 12 years ago, when 15 soldiers died in an ambush in remote Semdinli, where the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi borders converge.

“We are going to evaluate the situation and take the necessary measures,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters ahead of the scheduled government meeting but did not elaborate.

Violence in southeastern Turkey, where the PKK launched an armed insurgency for self-rule in 1984, has cost of more than 37,000 lives so far.

The Turkish army often steps up operations in the mountainous area at the end of summer to prevent PKK rebels from heading back to their bases in northern Iraq to see out the winter.—AFP