DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey, March 31, 2006 (AFP) - 09h12 - A
seven-year old boy shot in the chest during a third
day of sustained rioting by Kurds in eastern Turkey
died overnight, a hospital source said Friday.
The child was fatally wounded Thursday when some
10,000 angry protesters took to the streets of
Diyarbakir, Turkey's largest Kurdish-majority city,
for the funerals of three people killed during the
earlier clashes with police.
Police shot into the air during the confrontations,
according to witnesses. Local authorities did not
provide any details on the circumstances of boy's
death.
More than 250 people have been injured during
clashes, more than half of them police and security
personnel.
Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu arrived in
Diyarbakir late Thursday, after demonstrators
vandalized numerous stores and attacked public
buildings in a third day of rioting.
The situation was relatively calm Friday morning,
and most stores had reopened, an AFP correspondent
on the scene reported.
The violence erupted Tuesday after the funerals of
four of 14 rebels from the separatist Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), killed by the army during
fighting at the weekend.
Hundreds of Kurdish youths went on the rampage in
Diyarbakir on Tuesday and Wednesday, attacking
police with stones and petrol bombs and vandalizing
shops and public buildings.
The violence spilled over Thursday to the nearby
town of Batman, where the rioters fire-bombed a bank
and ransacked the office of a far-right nationalist
party, the Anatolia news agency said.
Beside the seven-year old boy, three other people
were killed during this week's urban demonstrations:
a protestor, a nine-year-old boy hit by a bullet
while watching from a roof, and a man killed in a
traffic accident while running from the melee.
Kurdish politicians have blamed the riots on
Ankara's failure to meet their demands for greater
freedoms.
Keen to boost its bid to join the European Union,
Ankara has made a series of gestures to the Kurds,
including allowing Kurdish-language broadcasts and
private language courses, but activists want broader
rights.
The conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives since the
PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara, the
European Union and the United States, took up arms
for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast in 1984.
AFP |
Turkish gendarmes detain a protester during clashes
in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir
(Kurdistan-Turkey) March 30, 2006.
Photo:Reuters
A Kurdish man carries his wounded son to an
ambulance during the clashes in southeastern Turkish
city of Diyarbakir, March 30, 2006
Photo:Reuters |
® 