Turkey imposes curfew in over 30 Kurdish villages

Turkish authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on Wednesday in at least 35 villages in the Kurdish province of Bitlis.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Turkish authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on Wednesday in at least 35 villages in the Kurdish province of Bitlis as the army launched an operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters in the area.

The office of the Ankara-appointed governor of Bitlis said in a press release on its website that the indefinite curfew in the mountainous province is meant to capture PKK members.

No details regarding the size and scope of the military operation were available.

Among the villages under curfew, 27 are in the central district whereas eight others are in the Mutki district.

Elsewhere in the Hakkari province on the border with the Kurdistan Region, PKK fighters killed four Turkish soldiers and wounded three others in a surprise attack on an outpost, according to a website belonging to the group.

There was no corroboration of the killings from the Turkish side.

Since the revival of the decades-long PKK-Turkish state conflict in the aftermath of the mid-2015 collapse of a round of peace talks between the two sides, authorities on hundreds of occasions have enforced, at times months-long curfews in scores of Kurdish provinces.

Last month during a curfew in the Diyarbakir province, an army helicopter wounded at least three civilians when it opened fire on a village.

The ongoing military activity in the Kurdish region comes as Turkey last week sent forces into Syria's Idlib.

 

Editing by Ava Homa