PKK attack kills two workers in Kurdish province: Turkish authorities

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – The armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighting the Turkish army killed two civilians and wounded three other workers in a rural area of the Kurdish province of Hakkari, said the Ankara-appointed governor’s office there on Wednesday.

In a press release on its website, the governorate detailed the attack conducted with long-range guns as occurring near the village of Cobanpinar (Wargenima in Kurdish) where a strategic Turkish military base is located on the border with Iranian Kurdistan.

The PKK has not claimed the assault on the workers who were maintaining energy lines in Hakkari's Yuksekova (Gever) district for a private electricity company.

There was no statement at the time of publishing this report by the group waging a decades-long guerrilla warfare against the Turkish state for larger Kurdish rights.

The condition of two of the wounded was critical, said Turkish authorities.

Turkish government forces supported by attack helicopters launched an operation in the region.

Civilian casualties of the PKK-Turkish state conflict in rural areas have recently risen with reports of violations from both sides.

A similar attack by PKK in late August in the neighboring Sirnak province killed three workers.

Later claiming the deadly assault, the group alleged the workers were government-paid irregulars whom the Turkish state enlists from the Kurds to help the army fight the PKK.

Last week, a day before the Islamic Eid al-Adha festival an armed Turkish drone bombed a group of civilians in a Hakkari village, killing one civilian and wounding three others.

Over the weekend, in Diyarbakir Province's Lice district an army helicopter fired at civilians in a village under curfew, killing one and injuring three others.

Government authorities in both cases called the civilians "collaborators" without further elaboration.

A renewed phase of the war between the two sides since the mid-2015 collapse of a two year-held ceasefire has killed over 2,000 people, hundreds of those victims were civilians, according to a UN report released in March.

Editing by Ava Homa