Two police officers, child killed in PKK attacks

DİYARBAKIR/ŞIRNAK – Doğan News Agency

DHA Photo

Two police officers and a 13-year-old civilian child were killed and five police officers were wounded in three separate attacks conducted by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in two southeastern provinces on Aug. 30. 

Suspected members of the PKK staged an armed attack on a police vehicle that was conducting a traffic checks in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır’s Kayapınar district at around noon on Aug. 30, killing one police officer and wounding another. 

According to eyewitnesses, a man in a white cap got out of a white car and shot at the vehicle that the police officers were inside, before fleeing the scene. 

An investigation has been opened into the incident and a wide-scale operation has been launched to find the perpetrators. 

In a separate attack, one police officer was killed and four others were injured after suspected PKK members detonated a bomb planted beforehand on a road in the southeastern province of Şırnak’s Silopi district on the afternoon of Aug. 30. 

The armored police vehicle, which was carrying the police officers, was on its way to intervene into incidents that erupted after three members of the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), the PKK’s youth wing, were killed in clashes between the PKK and the Turkish security forces late on Aug. 29. 

Meanwhile, a 13-year-old child Fırat Sımpıl was killed after members of the PKK set off a bomb near the Silvan Dam road construction in Diyarbakır, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Reports indicate that members of the PKK detonated a remote controlled bomb on Büyük Çeşme Avenue in Diyarbakır’s Silvan district, which is also used as a road to reach the construction site by the Silvan Dam. 
The bomb was detonated shortly after an armored vehicle of the Turkish armed forces drove by.

Sımpıl, who was walking past at time of the explosion to get groceries, was killed in the attack. 

Kadriye Sımpıl, the mother of the 13-year-old, said she “did not give her blessings” to those who planted the bomb near her house, leading to the death of one of her seven children, the semi-official Anadolu Agency reported. 

The explosion inflicted damage on the walls of a nearby house and the road.

A large-scale operation was launched by the security forces after the attack.