Dozens more killed in Turkey-PKK fighting
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Clashes between the Turkish army and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed dozens of people on Thursday and Friday.
Turkey's General Staff announced in a press release on its website that PKK fighters who attacked a military base in the Kurdish-majority province of Agri killed 7 Turkish paramilitaries, two soldiers, and one civilian.
The attack wounded three other soldiers and two civilians, added the press release.
PKK's military wing People's Defence Forces (HPG) claimed in a statement on its website to have killed 30 Turkish soldiers and paramilitaries who are officially dubbed as "village guards" in the attack that took place near Mount Tendurek on the border with Iran.
Clashes at the beginning of September in the Tendurek region saw 12 Turkish troops and 13 Kurdish guerrillas killed.
Turkey's village guards are paid by the government and usually recruited from Kurds as an additional local force familiar with the terrain in the Turkish fight against the PKK since 1985.
The guards whose number exceeds 50 thousand are pejoratively labeled as "jash" or "donkey's foal" by other Kurds who accuse them of being quislings to the Turkish State.
In Hakkari and Sirnak provinces bordering Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkish Army operations went on as the military claimed to have killed 25 Kurdish fighters in clashes and cross-border airstrikes in the last three days.
LOCAL POLITICIAN KILLED IN PKK ATTACK
Meanwhile, the PKK statement also claimed responsibility for the killing in Hakkari of a local Kurdish politician of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The AKP member Ahmet Budak was attacked on Wednesday in front of his house in his hometown of Semzinan. Heavily wounded, he died the same day at a hospital.
Budak was an AKP candidate for the Parliament in the November 2015 Turkish general election.
PKK said the killing of Budak was "punishment for his collaboration" with the Turkish authorities and a "warning to Kurdistanis within the AKP ranks."
(Reporting by Ari Khalidi)
Editing by Ava Homa