One soldier, one policeman killed by PKK militants in two attacks in Turkey’s east

ANKARA

CİHAN photo

One soldier was killed in an ambush staged by outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in Turkey’s southeastern province of Hakkari on Sept. 1, a day after a police officer was killed in a PKK attack in the eastern province of Batman. 

The Turkish military reported Sept. 2 a Turkish troop was killed by the PKK in an ambush that occurred in Hakkari, a southeastern Anatolian town bordering Iraq and Iran. 

The incident took place at 7:05 a.m. local time in the Şemdinli district of Hakkari, as a group of PKK militants opened fire on a military unit conducting an operation to provide road safety between the Şemdinli and Tekeli districts.   

A troop was killed, the army said in its statement, while two others were lightly wounded. Two F-16s were immediately sent to the region as part of a comprehensive military mobilization towards the region to defeat the terrorists, it read. 

As a result of the aerial campaign of the F-16s, 20 terrorists were killed, the semi-official Anadolu Agency reported, citing “reliable security sources.”

Clashes between the Turkish Army and the PKK have intensified since mid-July after the cease fire between the two was broken.

Meanwhile, one deputy police commissioner, 37-year-old Burhan Gatfar, succumbed to his injuries in hospital after being attacked by PKK members while inside a car in Batman on Sept. 1. 

Militants had opened fired with long-barreled rifles around 3:45 p.m. while the police officers were driving down a road to the historic village of Hasankeyf, killing Gatfar and injuring a fellow police officer. 

Gatfar, who was the father for two, and whose wife was also a police officer in the same province, was laid to rest in his hometown of Elazığ, an eastern province, after an official ceremony was held at the Batman Provincial Police Department.