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ANKARA, Aug 22 (AFP) - 16h30 - A Syrian suspect
was killed and two officers injured overnight in
Macka, northeast Turkey, as gunbattles erupted
between police and three suspects they were
tracking, the semi-official Anatolia news agency
reported Monday.
Anatolia quoted a report by the governorate of
Trabzon, to which Macka is attached, identifying the
victim as a "terrorist", the term officials use to
describe rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
or leftist extremists, although northeastern Turkey
is not part of the PKK's usual stomping grounds.
A statement from the local governor's office said
the dead person was Syrian. Turkey has previously
arrested Syrian nationals on charges of being
members of PKK or the Al-Qaeda network.
A first gunbattle erupted when police surrounded a
supermarket after being tipped off that the three
suspects were inside and one policeman was injured,
the agency said.
The three managed to flee but were cornered several
hours later and a fresh firefight erupted, in which
one suspect was killed and a second policeman was
wounded, it said.
A second suspect was captured and the third escaped,
Anatolia reported.
Police seized several AK-47 assault rifles,
ammunition, hand grenades and C-4 plastic explosives
in the suspects' hideout, the governor's office
said.
The PKK, which has been designated a terrorist group
by both the United States and the European Union,
operates mainly in the Kurdish majority southeast
Anatolia region where it launched a bloody armed
campaign for autonomy in 1984.
The group has stepped up violence in recent months
after calling off a five-year unilateral truce in
June 2004 on grounds that Ankara's moves to expand
Kurdish freedoms were insufficient.
The PKK last week announced a fresh one-month
ceasefire.
Turkish cells linked to al-Qaeda have also been
active in Turkey, with police this amonth arresting
two Syrians, one of whom admitted that he was
planning to blow up Israeli cruise ships off the
southern Turkish coast.
More than 60 people were killed in Istanbul in four
suicide bombings five days apart in November 2003
that targeted two synagogues, the British consulate
and the British-owned HSBC bank.
AFP
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