35 Kurdish militants killed by Turkey after they tried to storm base: officials

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Turkey’s army killed 35 Kurdish militants after they attempted to storm a base in the southeastern Hakkari province early on Saturday, military officials said.

The overnight attack came hours after clashes in Hakkari’s Cukurca district between soldiers and militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that left eight soldiers dead, the officials said.

The militants attempted to take the base in three different groups, but were spotted by aerial reconnaissance. An air operation was launched, killing 23 of them, the officials said.

Four more were then killed in a ground operation, they said. The remaining eight were killed in clashes in Hakkari’s Cukurca district.

Friday’s clashes in Cukurca also left 25 soldiers wounded, the officials said.

Turkey’s military – NATO’s second-largest – is grappling with the insurgency in the mainly Kurdish southeast as its senior ranks undergo a major shake-up in following a July 15-16 coup attempt.

On Thursday, Turkey announced an overhaul of the armed forces, with 99 colonels promoted to the rank of general or admiral and nearly 1,700 military personnel given dishonourable discharges over their alleged roles in the coup.

About 40 percent of all generals and admirals in the military have been dismissed since the coup.

In the southeast, the military has frequently carried out air strikes after a 2 1/2-year ceasefire and peace process between the government and the PKK broke down last summer.

Thousands of militants and hundreds of civilians and soldiers have been killed since then. Some cities in the predominantly Kurdish southeast have been engulfed in the worst violence since the 1990s.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK – designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union – began its insurgency in 1984.

 

REUTERS

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4 responses to “35 Kurdish militants killed by Turkey after they tried to storm base: officials”

  1. Michaelinlondon1234 Avatar
    Michaelinlondon1234

    Population has grown by about 25 million people since 1984. Running about 2 million people dying a year through old age and diseases. Net gain of about a million people a year currently…….Little or No family planning.

    1. Hind Abyad Avatar
      Hind Abyad

      Any Arabisation or Kurdification of Ancient Aramaic names of Syrian cities is a form of cultural genocide.

      1. Michaelinlondon1234 Avatar
        Michaelinlondon1234

        Languages and names are like tools. If they are useful they keep getting used. If you look at the history of English it is a blend of European languages. Then there is the issue of cave painting to graffiti…Naming a place is partly an extension of this.
        Londinium evolved to London(UK) to migrants naming towns in memory of places they have left
        Quote wilkipidia ”
        London is a city located in Southwestern Ontario, Canada along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 366,151 according to the 2011 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the non-navigable Thames River, approximately halfway between Toronto, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan. The City of London is a separated municipality, politically separate from Middlesex County, though it remains the county seat.
        London and the Thames were named in 1793 by Lord Simcoe, who proposed the site for the capital of Upper Canada. The first European settlement was between 1801 and 1804 by Peter Hagerman.[4] The village was founded in 1826 and incorporated
        in 1855. Since then, London has grown to be the largest Southwestern
        Ontario municipality and Canada’s 11th largest municipality, having
        annexed many of the smaller communities that surrounded it.”
        Re Syria.
        A lot of the Armenian and Christians who would have preserved the “Aramaic” Have now migrated. By all accounts the Kurdish are doing to minorities what Turkey did to minority Christian, Armenian and Greeks. This all comes down to a mix of prosperity, Population pressure and migration.

  2. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    There’s Nothing as fast as battlefield promotions.

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