Army launches another major anti-PKK operation amid fresh attacks in east

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

Cihan Photo

Turkish military has started a major anti-terror operation against outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the eastern province of Tunceli, amid the latest of series of PKK attacks that injured 12 security personnel in the southeastern province of Muş.

The army started the operation supported by an aerial campaign in rural areas between Tunceli’s Pülümür and Ovacık districts and the eastern province of Erzincan on Sept. 15. 

A main road connecting central Tunceli, Pülümür and Erzincan was blocked off at around 5 a.m. on Sept. 15 by the Tunceli Governor’s Office as part of the military campaign. The road, along which a large number of military troops and armored vehicles were deployed, was blocked until Sept. 18.

In the eastern province of Muş, 12 soldiers were wounded on the morning of Sept. 15 after PKK militants detonated an explosive targeting a military vehicle.

PKK militants detonated an explosive placed on the road while a guarded military vehicle was passing near the entry of the Suluca village. The wounded soldiers were taken to the Muş Public Hospital.

In series of gendarmerie operations in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır between Sept. 9 and 12, two militant shelters were discovered in Diyarbakır province’s Silvan district. The shelters contained one and a half tons of food, large numbers of everyday living material, medical equipment, a gas mask, documents, 350 Kalashnikov cases, and 500 cases with 9-mm pistols inside, the Diyarbakır Governor’s Office said in a written statement.

Ten 12-kilogram gas cylinders and 100 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, a commonly used explosive material, were also discovered buried near the shelters, the statement said.

In a separate incident in Diyarbakır, PKK militants fired rockets at a police vehicle heading to a police station in the Bağlar district of the province at around 10 p.m. on Sept. 14, with no casualties reported.

The rockets hit a teahouse 80 meters from the police station. The teahouse’s owner said the three would have been killed if they had been inside the teahouse, but they were outside at the time because of the hot weather.

In the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, 17 suspects were detained in the Viranşehir district late on Sept. 14 after the district police department’s counterterrorism unit officers raided 32 separate locations as part of an anti-terror operation against the outlawed Revolutionary Patriotic Youth Movement (YDG-H).

In the southeastern province of Batman, a YDG-H militant who was injured in an explosion on Sept. 6 while making a hand-made explosive device to be used against security personnel was arrested on Sept. 15 after he was discharged from hospital.

In the southeastern province of Hakkari, PKK militants opened fire at police officers deployed to fill trenches dug by militants in the Yüksekova district on the evening of Sept. 14. Police responded with fire and several homes were slightly damaged, but no casualties were reported.