News / Turkey

2 Turkish gendarmes killed in PKK car bombing

Thursday, 24 March 2016 11:35 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 25 March 2016 2:07 AM ]

File photo shows people walking past destroyed vehicles as they leave their houses during clashes in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakir province on March 15, 2016. (AFP)

Two Turkish gendarmerie soldiers have been killed and 15 others wounded in a bomb blast staged by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the country’s troubled southeast.

The Kurdish militants detonated a car bomb in the vicinity of the Mermer gendarmerie police station located between the Diyarbakir and Bingol provinces, Turkish media reported on Thursday.

According to reports, after the blast, clashes erupted between soldiers and members of the PKK which Turkey deems as a terrorist organization.

The incident follows Turkey’s Wednesday bombing of PKK positions around the southeast Turkish town of Semdinli and inside Iraq.

Based on a statement released by Ankara, at least 26 militants were killed in a series of air force sorties which targeted PKK shelters and ammunition depots on Turkish soil.

Over the past months, Turkey has been conducting offensives against PKK positions in the largely Kurdish southern regions.

Turkish armed forces have expanded the operations well beyond the borders, chasing the PKK militants into northern parts of Iraq, while shelling Kurdish parts of Syria as well.

The Turkish government has also been at loggerheads with Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) based in Syria, billing them as PKK allies.

Turkey’s operations began in the wake of a July 2015 bombing in the town of Suruc, where over 30 people died. Ankara blamed the blast on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group. The bombing prompted the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, to react by attacking police and security forces.

The attacks against the PKK voided a shaky ceasefire declared in 2013 between the Turkish government and the militants, who have been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since 1980s.

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