DIYARBAKIR: Six people, including at least four civilians, were killed on Thursday in ongoing clashes between Turkey’s armed forces and militants in the mainly Kurdish southeast, security sources and officials said.

Smoke rose above the town of Cizre near the Syrian border after Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels armed with rocket launchers attacked a military base in the afternoon, witnesses and security sources said.

Days of street fighting between soldiers and militia fighters raged on overnight in the town of Yuksekova, about 300 km further east, near the Turkey’s border with Iraq and Iran, despite a curfew there, officials added.

“There are people with critical injuries who are being treated in homes. Security forces have shelled a neighbourhood, and hit residential buildings,” said Abdullah Zeydan, a lawmaker representing the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

A 2-1/2-year-old ceasefire between Turkey and Kurdish militants collapsed in July after a group close to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels shot dead two police officers and Turkey retaliated with strikes against the group in Iraq and Turkey.

An estimated 800 PKK fighters, more than 60 soldiers and police officers and 12 civilians have been killed, according to government sources and Turkish media.

The fighting in Cizre killed three people and wounded seven, including a seven-year-old child, security sources said. Gunfire rang out for hours after the initial attack, Reuters video footage showed.

Three other people were killed in Yuksekova, a local government official said on condition of anonymity. One of them was a father-of-three aged 32, said Zeydan.

Footage from Yuksekova showed a group carrying a man with gauze bandages in a blood-stained blanket ducking when they came under fire.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the rebels first took up arms in 1984 for a Kurdish homeland, a goal they later scaled down to greater political autonomy.

The latest violence erupted after a June 7 election did not produce a single-party government and now threatens to mar a new vote scheduled for Nov 1.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2015

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