ISTANBUL,— Two Turkish police were killed on Friday in a gun attack on police headquarters in the southern region of Adana blamed on Kurdish militants, the official Anatolia news agency reported.

The gunmen fired on police headquarters in the city of Pozanti, sparking clashes which left two police as well as two militants dead, Anatolia said, quoting top local officials.

The police were hunting for those attackers who escaped, it added.

Mustafa Buyuk, governor for Adana province said PKK militants opened fire at the police station in the town Pozanti, touching off a clash that left two policemen and two rebels dead.

The attack is the latest to be blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which is engaged in an escalating cycle of violence with the security forces.

The military has been carrying out daily air raids on the group’s camps in northern Iraq for the past few days.

The PKK’s more-than-three-decade-long insurgency for greater rights and powers for Turkey’s Kurdish minority has left tens of thousands dead.

According to an AFP tally, at least 13 members of the Turkish security forces have been killed in attacks blamed on the PKK since the current crisis erupted last week.

Since it was established in 1984 the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state in Turkish Kurdistan region in the southeast of the country.

But now limited its demands to establish an autonomous Kurdish region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds, who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 75-million population but have long been denied basic political and cultural rights, its goal to political autonomy. A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, AFP | Agencies | Ekurd.net

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