Agitated protesters went on the rampage in southeastern Turkey on Saturday in the fifth day of street battles with the security forces. Fresh clashes between protesters and police in Kýzýltepe, near the Syrian border, killed one protester and injured 10 others on Saturday, security sources said. The latest death brought the toll in this week's violence to eight dead. In Saturday's violence, demonstrators set fire to a branch of a major bank and a building used by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). There were also scuffles in Silopi, at the Iraqi border, where riot police stopped protesters from marching to the office of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Anatolia said. A three-year-old boy died of gunshot wounds on Friday in Diyarbakir and local media said he was killed after police fired shots over the heads of protesters. | near the air base |
The European Union, which Turkey aims to join, has expressed concern about the violence and urged Ankara to do more to combat poverty in the southeast and to boost Kurds' cultural rights. The U.S. government, meanwhile, alerted Americans to violence in southeastern Turkey that the State Department said potentially could spread to the country's main cities in the west.