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One soldier, two police, 12 Kurdish militants killed in Turkey’s southeast

The military said in a statement that it had killed more than 200 PKK fighter over the past week.

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Turkey started a major ground operation in the country southeast Kurdish regions in a bid to crackdown on the Kurdish Marxist guerrilla group Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party (PKK). He said that Turkey’s military campaign killed more than three thousands, a lot of them were PKK rebels, describing 2015 as one of the most violent years since the beginning of the Kurds’ unrest three decades ago. In the town of Silopi, east of Diyarbakir, a man was shot dead and his wife and another relative were injured when their home came under attack.

One Turkish police officer has been killed and two security officials have been injured during an anti-terror operation in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, security sources told Anadolu Ahency on Friday.

Sur, which boasts UNESCO World Heritage sites, has been under a round-the-clock curfew since December 2 as the army tries to push out PKK fighters who have dug trenches and built barricades there and in other residential areas in the region.

Hundreds of soldiers and civilians have also died in towns and cities across the region in the operations.

The ruling AK Party, founded by Erdogan, has put a new constitution at the heart of its agenda after winning back a majority in a November parliamentary election.

Dogan said it was not clear where the shell had been fired from but that an investigation was under way.

Nearby in the town of Cizre, army tanks could be seen pounding buildings believed to contain PKK members on Sunday, Reuters TV footage showed.

Local residents fled their houses, carrying their children and carting belongings in a wheelbarrow or suitcases. “We must leave, but we don’t know where we can go, how to leave”.

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.

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“This region (Turkey’s Kurdish areas) has suffered twice, from PKK assaults since 1985 and at the same time it has been subjected to state terror which has targeted the population for allegedly supporting the PKK”, Erdogan wrote in the report.

Turkish Kurds call for self-rule as fighting continues