Killed In Turkish Military Clash With Kurdish Militants: Army

Turkish security forces launched a large-scale offensive across the country’s majority-Kurdish southeast last week, placing the towns of Cizre and Slopi under 24-hour curfew.

In the Diyarbakir Province’s Sur district alone “tens of thousands” were forced to flee their homes since Ankara imposed the latest strict curfew early December, CNN Turk reported, citing the opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP).

Further north in the region’s largest city of Diyarbakir, part of which is also under curfew, three Kurdish rebels were killed in clashes with police on Thursday, according to security sources. State media says 168 PKK militants have been killed.

The PKK negotiated a cease-fire with Ankara in 2013, but the truce fell apart in the wake of a suicide bomb attack in the border town of Suruc in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa on July 20, in which 33 pro-Kurdish and left-wing activists were killed.

Diyarbakir, Turkey: Turkish troops killed six Kurdish militants in a clash in the restive southeast and one of three soldiers wounded in the firefight died in hospital, the armed forces said in a statement today.

The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggested there would be no let-up in the campaign.

Locals also complained about a lack of food and water. “A handful of bandits who claim to be defending the people are burning and damaging and terrorizing the region…We haven’t allowed them, we will not do so”, Davutoglu said in Ankara.

The body of Taybet Inan, a 57-year-old mother of 11 shot dead by security forces last week, was left lying on a street in Silopi for a week before being retrieved on Friday, said HDP lawmaker Ferhat Encu.

Islamist Kurdish party Huda-Par, usually sympathetic to the ruling AK Party, said security forces were taking position inside civilian houses including two party members, against the residents’ will, therefore making them a target.