Two PKK members killed in southeastern Turkey

DIYARBAKIR - Agence France-Presse

Two PKK members were killed today in Turkey's southeastern Diyarbakır city in a shootout after a police raid on their hideout, police said.

Two members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) refused to heed a police call to surrender and threw grenades, television reports said.

A local police official said two militants died in an ensuing gunbattle and added that two rifles and three hand grenades had been seized.
      
Police said the fingerprints of the dead men revealed they were among the perpetrators of a recent attack that left two police officers dead.
      
The PKK, which took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives, is labeled a terrorist outfit by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The raid comes after a botched Turkish strike in the region which killed 35 civilians, prompting the PKK to issue a call for an "uprising."

Turkey's military command said it carried out the air strike after a spy drone spotted a group moving toward its sensitive southeastern border under cover of darkness late Wednesday, in an area known to be used by militants.
      
But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted Friday that the victims were smugglers and not PKK members as the army had originally claimed.