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Toddler killed in southeast Turkey, bomb
in Istanbul
1.4.2006
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DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey, March 31, 2006 (AFP) - 20h01 - A
stray bullet killed a toddler Friday as Kurdish
protesters battled security forces in southeastern
Turkey, a hospital said, raising the death toll this
week to seven.
The three-year-old boy was shot in the throat while
watching young protesters battle security forces
from the terrace of his home in Batman, southeastern
Turkey (Kurdistan-Turkey), a hospital official said.
The bullet was apparently shot by a policeman firing
into the air to disperse about 200 protesters, the
official said.
In Istanbul a bomb planted at a bus stop killed one
man and injured 13 people and a Kurdish separatist
group said it carried out the attack as a reprisal
for events in the southeast.
The protests there began Monday in Diyarbakir, 70
kilometres (45 miles) west of Batman. Six people,
including two children, died in clashes between
Kurdish protesters and Turkish security in
Diyarbakir.
The mayor of Diyarbakir, Osman Baydemir, called at a
news conference Friday for the protesters to "go
home".
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told
party officials in Ankara that "people who put their
children on to the streets or give terrorist
organisations the chance to use them will shed their
tears in vain tomorrow."
"Our security forces will do what they have to,
whoever the people serving as the instrument of
terrorism may be, be they children or women," he
said, according to the Anatolia news agency.
The crisis began Monday when thousands of people
confronted security forces after the funerals of
four of 14 PKK rebels 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 Batman, where
the rioters fire-bombed a bank and ransacked the
office of a far-right nationalist party, the
Anatolia news agency said.
Besides the toddler's death Friday, a hospital
official said three people had died from their
injuries in hospital overnight, including a
seven-year-old boy.
Three others were killed earlier in the week,
including a nine-year-old boy hit by a bullet while
watching from a roof.
In a nearby mountainous area, meanwhile, Anatolia
reported Friday that a group of seven PKK rebels,
two of them women, had died in fighting with police
near the town of Silopi. It did not say when the
clash occurred.
The attack on the Istanbul bus stop was claimed in
an authenticated email to AFP from the Kurdistan
Freedom Falcons (TAK) which said it was a reprisal
for repression by Ankara in the predominantly
Kurdish southeast of the country.
"The fascist and colonialist Turkish state has
conducted a series of murderous attacks againt our
people in recent days," the message said adding that
"the Kurdish people, today as yesterday, will not
remain without defence. "From now on a response will
follow each attack against our people with more
violent actions. This time we shall not only target
property but people as well," the TAK said,
threatening to "turn Turkey into hell."
The police say that the TAK is a codename for the
PKK, used when it carries out actions that draw
international condemnation but the PKK say it is
made up of elements over whom they have no control.
The conflict in southeastern Turkey 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 1984.
AFP
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