Turkish battle with Kurdish militants kills 55, party calls for resistance

Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, bordering Iran, has seen renewed hostilities between the Turkish government and Kurdish guerrilla forces following July’s breakdown of a two-year peace process.

In the nearby city of Diyabrkair, police dispersed a demonstration against the operationusingwater cannon trucks and tear gas.

With the crackdown now in a fourth day, a Turkish soldier was killed in intense clashes with the PKK, the first fatality suffered by the army in the operation, the security sources told AFP.

The government says the militants have placed explosive devices, dug trenches and set up barricades in Cizre and Silopi and has vowed to press ahead with the operations until no armed rebel remains in the two towns.

Witnesses said people scattered into side streets as the intervention began, coinciding with a call from pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-leader Selahattin Demirtas for people to resist the operations. Many citizens have reportedly left the district before the curfew was imposed.

Officials say 10,000 police and military personnel are employed in the operation, which is also making use of heavy weaponry, including tanks.

“If they think they can make us take a step back by showing a tank gun, they are wrong”, he said, according to Reuters.

Since then, official figures suggest more than 200 members of the security forces have been martyred and over 1,700 PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq, including airstrikes.

The army said that two schools that had been used by the PKK as hideouts had been rendered inoperable while a stash of arms had been seized in Silopi.

Traditionally active in the countryside, the PKK has shifted its focus in recent years to towns in the southeast. The militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) often disputes state-issued claims of casualties inflicted on the group, saying the numbers are vastly inflated.