PKK militants stage new attacks in Turkey’s southeast

DİYARBAKIR - Doğan News Agency

Photo from the August 10 car bomb attack on a police station in Istanbul's Sultanbeyli district.

Militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have carried out two separate armed attacks in the southeastern provinces of Diyarbakır and Tunceli.

PKK militants fired shots with long-barreled weapons at the police department from a mountainous area in Diyarbakır’s Lice district at around 1:30 p.m. on Aug 10, with no casualties reported.

A brief clash erupted after police fired back in response to the armed offensive.

Diyarbakır Police Department Head Halis Böğürcü said no casualties were reported in the attack. 

The perpetrators were reported to be at large and the police started a vast anti-terror operation to arrest them.

In a separate incident in the eastern province of Tunceli, PKK militants fired with Biksi machine guns at two military helicopters.

The attack on the helicopters came hours after the outlawed Turkish Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (TKP/ML) and the Organization for Liberation of Turkish Workers, Peasants (TİKKO), along with several PKK militants, fired shots with long-barreled weapons and rockets at the province’s Çiçekli Gendarmerie Station at around 6 p.m. on Aug. 9.

Clashes that erupted between the two attacks lasted for about 15 minutes, with soldiers deployed in the gendarmerie station responding to the terrorist attack with fire.

Militants from the PKK, the TKP/ML and TİKKO escaped the scene and ran toward a forested area called Zergavut after the clashes.

The attacks came amid spiraling violence against security forces that has left scores of deaths and injuries since the deadly bombing of leftist activists in Suruç on July 20.