PARIS—Three Kurdish activists were shot dead in what authorities called an “execution” in central Paris, prompting speculation that the long-running conflict between insurgents from the minority group and Turkey was playing out on French shores.

The slayings came as Turkey was holding peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which seeks self-rule for Kurds in the country’s southeast, to try to persuade it to disarm. The conflict between the group, known as the PKK, and the Turkish government has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference in Senegal on Thursday that his country was determined to press ahead with the talks despite the events in Paris, which he suggested could be the result of internal strife or an act to sabotage the talks. The PKK has a history of internal killings, but many Kurdish activists and militants were also victims of extrajudicial killings blamed on Turkish government forces in the 1990s.

Initial reports were contradictory but pointed to a grisly crime scene. One Kurdish organization said the door of the building where the women were found just after midnight was smeared with blood, that two of the women were shot in the neck and one in the stomach and that the killer used a silencer. French radio reported that all three were shot in the head.

The killings set off a round of accusations, with each side accusing the other of being behind the deaths. Police tried to contain hundreds of Kurds who flocked to the building in eastern Paris where the bodies were found Thursday, many blaming Turkey and calling the deaths a “political assassination.”

It was not clear if any of the women were members of the PKK, which Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union consider a terrorist organization. French President François Hollande said he and several politicians knew one of the women professionally. He did not say which one.

Turkey’s Anadolu news agency identified one of the victims as Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the PKK in her 50s, but there was no confirmation from French authorities.

The Paris prosecutors’ office did confirm that the other two victims were Leyla Soylemez and Fidan Dogan, both in their 20s. A news agency linked to the PKK, Firat news, said Dogan was the Paris representative of the Kurdistan National Congress. It said she became a Kurdish rights activist in 1999.

The slayings are being investigated by France’s anti-terrorism police.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who visited the scene, said the deaths were “without doubt an execution.” He called it a “totally intolerable act.”

Kurds are scattered over four countries — Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq — where they enjoy varying levels of freedom. In Turkey, they make up around 20 per cent of the population and were long denied many rights, including even speaking the Kurdish language in the 1980s.

In the PKK’s nearly three-decade insurgency, fighters frequently launch hit-and-run attacks from bases in northern Iraq, a largely autonomous Kurdish region. Turkey is now also worried about possible infiltration by Kurdish rebels from Syria, where Kurdish groups have reportedly grabbed power in some areas along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Hüseyin Celik, the deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling party, said the attack appeared to be the result of “an internal feud” within the PKK, but did not provide any evidence. Celik also suggested the slayings were an attempt to derail the peace talks.

Gultan Kisanak, a leader of a Kurdish political party, called Cansiz “an idol of the Kurdish people and Kurdish women” and rejected the possibility of an internal PKK feud.

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“How dare they present the murder of a revolutionary as internal strife without any evidence?” she said in response to Celik’s comment.

Erdogan said his country’s intelligence agency is meeting with the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, on a prison island off Istanbul where he is serving a life sentence since 1999. Two Kurdish legislators were allowed to travel to the island last week to participate in the talks.

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