Turkey, June 12: Kurdish separatist rebels carried out two attacks on troops in southeast Turkey, killing one soldier in a gunbattle and separately wounding 14 by detonating a roadside bomb, military officials said on Friday.
In one attack, Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas opened fire on Turkish soldiers in the province of Hakkari, killing one of them, officials said.
In the other, PKK rebels detonated explosives by remote control on the road south to Elazig in mountainous Tunceli province, wounding 13 soldiers, three of them seriously, and the civilian son of a driver in the convoy.
Some 500 troops backed by helicopters launched an operation in the area to track down the rebels.
PKK fighters regularly carry out such attacks on military vehicles in the mainly Kurdish southeast. Clashes with the military have escalated in recent weeks with the onset of warmer weather in the mountainous region.
The PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the region. More than 40,000 people have died in the conflict. ¬
—Agencies