Some 12 people were killed and two others injured on Saturday
when militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
ambushed a minibus in southeastern Turkey, local officials
said.
The incident took place when the Kurdish rebels attacked the
minibus carrying the 14 people who were returning to their village
in Sirnak province near the border with Iraq.
The PKK militants ordered the passengers out of the vehicle and
gunned them down with automatic weapons, killing 7 village guards
and five civilians, and injuring two others, according to the
officials.
The ambush came only one day after Turkish Interior Minister
Besir Atalay and his visiting Iraqi counterpart Jawad al-Bulani
signed an anti-terrorism agreement aimed at cracking down on PKK
separatist rebels.
The PKK has increased attacks on Turkish troops in southeastern
Turkey, which led to rising Turkish demands for an incursion into
northern Iraq to crush the rebels based there.
The group, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US
and the EU, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in
the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of
strife that has claimed more than 30, 000 lives.
(Xinhua News Agency September 30, 2007)
