Tag Archives: Kurdish militants

Turkey detains 18 people over Izmir attack, sees PKK responsible: minister

Turkish police secure area after explosion

By Mehmet Emin Caliskan

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish police detained 18 people over a gun and bomb attack that killed two people in the city of Izmir and the justice minister said on Friday there was no doubt Kurdish militants were responsible.

Militants clashed with police and detonated a car bomb outside the main courthouse in Turkey’s third largest city, located on its western Aegean coast, on Thursday after their vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint. A police officer and a court employee were killed. Nine other people were wounded.

The incident again highlighted the deterioration in Turkey’s public security, coming soon after a gunman killed 39 New Year’s revelers inside a popular Istanbul nightclub. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for that attack.

Authorities said it was clear from weapons seized by police that militants had planned a much bigger attack in Izmir but it was thwarted when security forces spotted their vehicle as it approached the courthouse.

Speaking on Friday at the funeral of the slain police officer, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the two assailants, shot dead by police, had been identified and efforts were under way to find their accomplices. Police had detained 18 people.

“All the information we have obtained show it was the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) terrorist organization who gave instructions for the attack and that the terrorists were from the PKK,” he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

On Friday, security police took up guard near the courthouse as hundreds of people filed in for the funeral. Thursday’s explosion shattered windows in a nearby cafeteria and scattered rubble across the steps to the courthouse entrance.

Hundreds in Izmir’s main Alsancak square protested over the attack, holding up banners that read, “We are not afraid.”

The PKK – designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union – and its affiliates have been carrying out increasingly deadly attacks over the past year and a half, ever further from the largely Kurdish southeast, where they have waged an insurgency since 1984.

Izmir, a liberal city on Turkey’s Aegean seacoast, had largely escaped the PKK and Islamist militant violence that has scarred Istanbul and the capital Ankara in recent months.

Turkey, a NATO member, is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Syria.

(Writing by Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Curfew widened in southeast Turkey, clashes kill 23

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Security forces killed 20 Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey while three Turkish soldiers died in a rebel attack, the military said on Wednesday, as authorities widened a curfew in the mainly Kurdish region’s largest city, Diyarbakir.

Hundreds of locals, including children and the elderly, fled curfew-bound areas of Diyarbakir’s Sur district as gunfire and blasts resounded and police helicopters flew overhead, a Reuters witness said. Some people cried as they carried away possessions.

The southeast has endured the worst violence in two decades since a 2-1/2-year-old ceasefire between the state and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants collapsed in July, reviving a conflict that has killed 40,000 people since 1984.

The army said 11 PKK members died in the town of Cizre, near the Syrian border, and nine more in Sur on Tuesday, bringing the militant death toll in the two towns to some 600 since security operations began there last month.

It said three soldiers were killed in a militant attack in Sur, where security sources said militants opened fire with rifles and a rocket launcher.

The ancient Sur district, enclosed by Roman city walls, has suffered extensive damage in the fighting and much of it has been under a round-the-clock curfew since Dec. 2.

The district governor’s office said the curfew was extended to five more districts so security forces could remove explosive devices and barricades and fill in ditches set up by militants.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union all classify the PKK as a terrorist organization. The PKK says it is fighting for autonomy for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

Rights groups and locals have voiced growing concern about the civilian death toll in the security operations since last month. The pro-Kurdish HDP party puts the toll at nearly 120.

Rights groups have highlighted the plight of some 28 people sheltering in a Cizre cellar, where four have died and three are in a critical condition, according to information obtained by Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch.

“Medical attention is not being provided to those in need. This is an urgent situation that the Turkish government needs to address imminently to prevent loss of life,” she told a news conference in Istanbul.

In Diyarbakir, healthcare groups including a doctors’ association and union called for ambulances to be allowed to rescue the wounded in Cizre, where ongoing clashes and the curfew are preventing people from moving about.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Gulsen Solaker in Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Mark Heinrich)