DIYARBAKIR-AMED, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— Kurdish militants detonated a bomb which killed three Turkish soldiers in the Kurdish region in southeast Turkey, a provincial governor’s office said on Tuesday, adding that five rebels were killed in clashes in the region.

The violence occurred as the military conducted operations against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the Uludere area of Sirnak province, near the border with Iraq, the governor’s office said. It did not say when the deaths occurred.

Five Turkish soldiers were also wounded in the remotely-detonated bomb blast, the statement said, adding that army operations in the area were continuing.

Since July 2015, Turkey initiated a controversial military campaign against the PKK in the country’s southeastern Kurdish region after Ankara ended a two-year ceasefire agreement. Since the beginning of the campaign, Ankara has imposed several round-the-clock curfews, preventing civilians from fleeing regions where the military operations are being conducted.

Observers say the crackdown has taken a heavy toll on the Kurdish civilian population and accuse Turkey of using collective punishment against the minority. Activists have accused the security forces of causing huge destruction to urban centres and killing Kurdish civilians.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. Nearly 40,000 people have been killed in the resulting conflict since then.

A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974, and has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.

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

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