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TUNCELI, Turkey,
July 2 (Reuters) - Five soldiers were killed and
eight people were injured on Saturday when a bomb
planted by Kurdish guerrillas exploded on a train in
eastern Turkey, military officials said.
A second train which travelled to the scene to
provide assistance was fired on by militants armed
with rifles, an official said. It was not clear if
there were any casualties in this attack.
The state-run Anatolian news agency said a postal
train was targetted in the first attack. The five
dead and three of those injured were soldiers
travelling on the train in Bingol province between
the eastern towns of Elazig and Tatvan when the
blast occurred around 10:15 a.m. (0715 GMT).
One official said rebels from the separatist
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were believed to have
laid the C-4 plastic explosives on the track and
triggered them by remote control. A military
operation was launched to capture those responsible.
The blast toppled carriages, and work had begun to
rescue people trapped inside, an official said.
Around 100 people were on board the train at the
time. The injured were being transported to hospital
by helicopter.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in the
PKK's armed campaign for self-rule in southeast
Turkey since they took up arms in 1984.
The clashes tailed off after PKK leader Abdullah
Ocalan was captured and jailed in 1999, but there
has been a resurgence of violence since the group
called off a unilateral ceasefire last year.
On Friday, police shot dead a suspected suicide
bomber at the Justice Ministry after he apparently
tried to set off an explosive device near Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan's office.
Police grabbed him after he apparently set off a
detonator but failed to explode his main device. He
escaped into the street where police shot him.
Police gave the bomber's name as Eyup Beyaz and said
he was known to be a member of Turkey's largest
far-left faction, the Revolutionary People's
Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).
Turkey has a long history of bombings mounted by a
wide range of groups, from leftists to Islamists and
the PKK, but suicide attacks are rare.
Four devastating suicide bomb attacks claimed by a
group linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network
killed more than 60 people in Turkey's largest city
of Istanbul in November 2003.
Reuters
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