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DIYARBAKIR: Eleven Kurdish separatist
guerrillas and two Turkish soldiers were killed on
Tuesday in renewed fighting in the country’s
southeast, a security official said.
Violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast has been on
the rise since Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
fighters called off a six-year unilateral ceasefire
on June 1, threatening to rekindle a separatist
conflict that killed more than 30,000 people, mostly
Kurds, in the 1980s and 1990s.
The latest fighting broke out on August 28 in
mountainous Sirnak province near the Iraqi border,
the official said. reuters
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk
Turks attack Kurdish rebels,
Associated Press in Ankara
1.9.2004
The Guardian
Two Turks and 11 Kurds have been killed in three
days' of fighting between the army and the Kurdistan
Workers party or PKK, now known as Kongra-Gel, in
Hakkari province on the Turkish border with Iraq.
A Turkish official said yesterday that more than
1,000 troops took part in the offensive. And the
foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, again urged the US
to take action against Turkish Kurd bases across the
border.
More than 20 soldiers or policemen have been killed
since June 1, when the rebels called off a ceasefire
declared in 1999 after the capture of their leader,
Abdullah Ocalan.
The PKK began a war for autonomy in 1984 that has
left 37,000 dead. Turkey has ruled out talks with
the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by the
US state department and the European Union.
Turkish officials say some of the increase in
violence could be due to PKK splits between those
advocating a political struggle for autonomy and
those favouring a return to arms. Turkey is home to
an estimated 12 million Kurds.
Mr Gul said the intensification of attacks was a
sign of a "panicking group on the brink of a breakup".
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