Ankara, June 20: Kurdish rebels kept up their attacks on Turkey’s military overnight killing one soldier and wounding another in the country’s east, bringing this weekend’s death toll to 12 soldiers, the Anatolia news agency reported Sunday.
Clashes broke out between soldiers and militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after the rebels attacked a barracks near Palu in eastern Turkey, the agency said.
Security forces launched a search operation to find the assailants, the agency added.
Saturday was the bloodiest day in two years for the Turkish army after Kurdish rebels killed 11 soldiers in the far southeast of the country near the border with Iraq, the army said.
According to the military, 12 rebels died in a counter-attack.
Turkish warplanes also launched bombing raids on Kurdish rebel outposts in neighbouring Iraq where the separatists have established rear bases for some 2,000 fighters, the military said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to keep up the fight against the separatists and said Turkey was willing to “pay the price” to “annihilate” the PKK.
The mounting violence in recent months has undermined the government’s bid to reach a peaceful end to the 26-year-old conflict with Kurdish rebels seeking a separate homeland in the country’s southeast.
The conflict with the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community, has claimed more than 45,000 lives since it began in 1984, according to the army.
The PKK will launch attacks in cities across Turkey if the army maintains a policy of military confrontation, a PKK spokesman said on Saturday.
“We will take our operations to all Turkish cities if the government continues its attacks against us,” spokesman Ahmed Denis said in the Iraqi Kurdistan regional capital of Arbil.
“Turkey wants to us take us towards war,” he said. “She is not sincere in dealing with the Kurdish issue and doesn’t want to deal with this issue peacefully.”
“The measures she has taken so far are just a hoax,” he added in allusion to the so-called “Kurdish opening” announced by Erdogan amid great fanfare last October.
The initiative has faltered amid an opposition outcry that Ankara is bowing to the PKK, as well as persistent rebel attacks and a judicial onslaught on Kurdish activists.
—Agencies