|
Kurdish rebels kill seven Turkish soldiers
Kurdish rebels killed six Turkish soldiers and wounded 15 in an overnight raid Tuesday on a military outpost along the border with Iraq, indicating the resiliency of their low-level insurgency and the failure of efforts to reach a peace accord. Another soldier died in a separate attack.Troops backed by helicopter gunships surged into the mountainous area after the attack, even as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged that military action alone would not end a 26-year conflict rooted in the grievances of Turkey's Kurdish minority. "There is no magic wand," Erdogan said in a weekly address in Parliament. "If we look at it as merely a question of security, we would be wrong. We have done so for years. The results are clear. But this issue has sociological, psychological, diplomatic and many other aspects." According to the prime minister and Anatolia news agency, rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, fired rockets and other weapons at the unit at around 2 a.m. At least one rebel was killed, and clashes were underway later in the day. The fighting happened near the town of Cukurca in Hakkari province in southeast Turkey, a frequent site of attacks by PKK militants who slip across an Iraqi border that is difficult to police because of its remote and rugged landscape. In a separate attack Tuesday, suspected rebels fired on a military vehicle near the town of Gurpinar in Van province, north of Cukurca, DHA news agency reported. One soldier died, and the attackers fled. A recent decision by jailed PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan to leave decisions to rebel commanders in the field led to more ambushes, said Carina O'Reilly, Europe analyst for London-based Jane's Country Risk. She said there could be more attacks in urban settings if the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, a PKK branch with some autonomy, become more active. Posted by: Fred 2010-07-21 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=301499 |