8 PKK members surrender in Turkey's Southeast

Another group of Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, members has surrendered to Turkish authorities in the country’s Southeast, where the Turkish military has been fighting the outlawed group for 25 years, the Reuters news agency reported.

The eight PKK members traveled from camps in northern Iraq, against their leaders’ orders, to the southeastern city of Silopi and later to Diyarbakır, where a prosecutor was questioning them, according to the Reuters report.

Contrary to the Reuters reports, the Anatolia news agency reported that only seven PKK members surrendered.

Authorities released three of the returnees on grounds of the "penitence law" specified in the Turkish Penal Code, reported Anatolia news agency late Thursday.

In October, a group of PKK members and Kurdish refugees crossed from Iraq into Turkey as a gesture of support for a Turkish government’s plan to end the ongoing Kurdish conflict. Five members of the “peace envoy” were detained then released upon entering the country. Most of the people in the group were refugees from Makhmour, a U.N.-run refugee camp in northern Iraq.

More than 45,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK picked up arms in Turkey's Kurdish-populated Southeast and east. Turkey, along with the United States and the European Union, classifies the PKK as a terrorist group.