Turkish troops kill five Kurdish rebels

Tunceli (Turkey), July 5: Turkish soldiers killed five Kurdish guerrillas, including two women, in clashes in eastern Turkey, military sources said today.

Two female rebels from the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were killed by soldiers near a village in mountainous Tunceli province yesterday evening as they tried to plant a roadside bomb, the sources said.

They said security forces had killed at least three more militants after engaging a group of some 15 PKK fighters in Tunceli countryside early on Thursday. Fighting was continuing in the region.

Turkey's powerful armed forces have urged the government to allow an incursion into neighbouring, mainly Kurdish, northern Iraq to crush up to 4,000 PKK militants who use that region as a base to attack security and civilian targets inside Turkey.

The PKK launched an armed separatist struggle in 1984. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Fighting subsided after the group's leader Abdullah Ocalan was capture and jailed in 1999, but the conflict has escalated in the last couple of years.

Reuters
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