Eleven dead as violence spreads in Kurdish areas in Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, SIRNAK, Turkey (K24) – At least eight Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters and three Turkish police officers were reported dead on Tuesday in the Kurdish-majority Sirnak (Sirnax) and Diyarbakir provinces.

In Diyarbakir, a K24 reporter said that a roadside bomb explosion killed three Turkish police officers and wounded two others when the vehicle they were in passed the village of Oguzlar (Keya) between the city of Diyarbakir and the town of Silvan (Farqin). The PKK's military wing, the People's Protection Forces (HPG) claimed on its website that the attack killed "six members of [the Turkish] special police forces in response to [Turkey's] massacres in the cities of [Northern] Kurdistan."

In central Diyarbakir, clashes between the Turkish army, police, and the PKK-affiliated Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDGH) continued in the historical Sur district where a curfew was reimposed last week. A Turkish army tank was seen firing mortars in a residential area in Sur in a smartphone video circulated on social media and apparently recorded by a member of the Turkish forces who can be heard to be talking with one of his colleagues, though K24 cannot independently verify this.

Beritan Canozer, a journalist working for the pro-Kurdish JINHA news agency in Diyarbakir was taken into custody on Wednesday by police while covering the clashes in Sur area, the agency reported.

Elsewhere in Sirnak Province, on Tuesday the Turkish Army killed eight PKK fighters in an "ongoing operation" in the town of Cizre (Cizir), according to a statement published Wednesday on the website of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces.

The towns of Cizre and Silopi (Silopya) in Sirnak province remain under a curfew declared last Monday by the local governorate. In an incident in the city of Sirnak, 15 students from Sirnak University were arrested on Tuesday night in the women's dormitory by special police forces when they held a noise protest against the ongoing curfews and clashes.

Meanwhile, the curfews in the towns of Dargecit (Kerboran) and Nusaybin (Nisebin) in Mardin province entered their sixth and fourth days respectively, as a civilian from Nusaybin, who did not want to be named told K24 via telephone that he could hear mortars as clashes continued in at least four neighbourhoods.

(Hesen Kako and Siddiq Eren contributed to this report from Diyarbakir)