Three Turkish police officers were killed Tuesday in a roadside bomb attack on their vehicle blamed on Kurdish rebels, security sources said, amid a new upsurge in violence in Turkey’s troubled southeast.
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Clashes broke out early on Tuesday in Diyarbakir and one policeman was injured, security sources said.
Hundreds of teachers fled Cizre and Sirnak on Monday on the orders of the education authorities, prompting fears a major military crackdown was looming.
The PKK launched a formal insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although it now presses more for greater autonomy and rights for the country’s largest ethnic minority.
There have been intense clashes in the Nur, Sur, Cudi and Yafes neighborhoods of Cizre, the report says.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the government is chose to clear districts and the towns of Kurdish militants.
Machinegun bursts echoed across Cizre on Thursday and smoke funnelled up from the town, overlooked by armoured vehicles parked on hills, after a spate of blasts and shooting overnight, with tracer fire lighting up the sky.
“Security operations are being conducted”, he said. “Neighbourhood by neighbourhood, house by house, street by street”, he said.
The army said in a statement that six members of the security forces had received non-life threatening wounds in Cizre while two had also been hurt in Silopi.
This method however has drawn criticism from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who said it would halt public access to education and health services. “There are people living in these houses, Davutoglu”, she said.
Sirnak Governor Ali Ihsan Su was quoted as saying that the operations were ongoing in two districts of Sirnak province.
The group stressed that the conflict between Ankara and the PKK was also compromising efforts against the Islamic State group as Turkey is refusing to collaborate the PKK and its ally in Syria, the YPG, which have both proven to be the most valuable force against the extremist group.
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Since late July when it declared a crackdown on terrorist groups, Turkey has carried out near-daily air raids or attacks against the PKK in its own Kurdish southeast and in northern Iraq, where the rebels operate some military camps. Since then more than 180 members of the security forces have been martyred and around 1,700 PKK terrorists killed.
