PKK bombing injures 17 Turkish soldiers in the Kurdish region

A Roadside bomb in Turkish Kurdistan. Photo: DIHA

DIYARBAKIR-AMED, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— Explosives planted by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants ripped through a Turkish military vehicle travelling through Turkish Kurdistan (southeast Turkey) on Monday, wounding 17 soldiers, the military said.

The vehicle was passing through the Kurdish Yuksekova district of Hakkari province, which borders Iranian Kurdistan and Iraqi Kurdistan, when the blast occurred, the army said, adding the wounded were immediately taken to hospital.

The army initially said four of the wounded were in a serious condition, but a later statement said none of the injuries were serious.

Since July 2015, Turkey initiated a controversial military campaign against the PKK in the country’s southeastern Kurdish region after Ankara ended a two-year ceasefire agreement. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing Kurdish civilians from fleeing regions where the military operations are being conducted.

In March 2017, the Turkish security forces accused by UN of committing serious abuses during operations against Kurdish militants in the nation’s southeast.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population.

More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.