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ANKARA, Turkey - Kurdish guerrillas kidnapped
a Turkish soldier Monday after stopping dozens of
cars at a makeshift roadblock in the southeast,
according to a report.
The attack comes amid escalating violence and was
unusually bold for the rebels, who have recently
staged hit-and-run or bombing attacks but have been
unable to mount sustained attacks.
Monday's kidnapping came after five Kurdish
guerrillas set up a roadblock and stopped some 40
cars at gunpoint on the road between the
southeastern towns of Tunceli and Pulumur, regional
Gov. Mustafa Erkal said.
The guerrillas robbed the passengers and shouted
rebel slogans before escaping with a hostage, Erkal
said. He did not identify the hostage, but the
Anatolia news agency said the rebels took a soldier
who was traveling to his hometown for vacation.
The last kidnapping was in 1995, when Kurdish
guerrillas grabbed eight soldiers and held them for
two years before releasing them.
The kidnapping comes amid an upsurge in violence
that since May has killed 30 soldiers and 25 rebels.
Militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK,
have battled government forces in a conflict that
has killed more than 37,000 people since 1984 in
southeastern Turkey.
Kurdish rebels take police officer hostage, rob
motorists
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, July 12 (AFP) - 10h06 - A
group of Kurdish rebels robbed dozens of motorists
and took a police officer hostage overnight after
setting up a roadblock in the Kurd-dominated
southeast of the country, a local governor said
Tuesday.
A group of five people believed to be from the
separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) stopped
some 40 cars on the highway between Tunceli and
Pulumur, robbing the riders and taking a police
officer hostage, said governor Tunceli Mustafa Erkal,
quoted by the Turkish news agency Anatolia.
Violence in the region has sharply increased since
the PKK called off a five-year unilateral ceasefire
in June 2004 on the grounds that Ankara was not
doing enough to expand Kurdish freedoms.
The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed about
37,000 lives, most of them between 1984 and 1999,
when the PKK, considered a terror group by the
United States and the European Union, waged a bloody
campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the region.
AFP
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