ISTANBUL // Two Turkish soldiers were killed and dozens wounded on Sunday in a suicide attack blamed on Kurdish militants, as Ankara kept up its air campaign against the rebels’ bases in northern Iraq.
The attack in the Dogubayazit district of the eastern Agri province is the first time Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants have been accused of staging a suicide attack in the current crisis, amid an escalating cycle of violence that appears to have no end in sight.
Ankara has launched a two-pronged “antiterror” offensive against ISIL militants in Syria and PKK militants based in northern Iraq after a wave of attacks inside Turkey.
But so far the bombardments have focused far more on the Kurdish rebels — with Turkish official media claiming that 260 suspected PKK members have been killed — and the militants have retaliated inside Turkey.
There is also growing controversy over possible civilian casualties in the Turkish bombings, and the local Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq on Saturday urged the PKK leave the area to spare civilians.
The suspected PKK suicide bomber drove a tractor laden with two tons of explosives up to the military station in the Dogubayazit district, the official Anatolia news agency reported, quoting the local governor’s office.
Two soldiers were killed and 31 were wounded, four of them seriously, the army said.
The soldiers were deployed with the local Gendarmerie, a branch of the army that looks after internal security in Turkey.
Such was the power of the blast that houses in a village several hundred metres away were hit by debris and several villagers slightly injured, the Dogan news agency said.
PKK militants who took part in the operation also launched ambushes on the roads to prevent medical teams reaching the scene before fleeing in the direction of Mount Ararat, it added.
In a separate incident also blamed on the PKK, one Turkish soldier was killed and seven were wounded when a mine exploded as their convoy was travelling on a road in the Midyat district of the Mardin province in southeastern Turkey, the army said.
The PKK’s insurgency for greater rights and powers for Turkey’s Kurdish minority has claimed tens of thousands of lives since it began more than 30 years ago. The current fighting has left a 2013 ceasefire in tatters.
At least 17 members of the security forces have now been killed in attacks blamed on the PKK since the fresh crisis erupted last week.
The attacks are the most severe in Turkey since the 2013 ceasefire, which raised hopes of finding a peace deal and sealing a historic reconciliation between the modern Turkish state with Kurds, by far its largest minority.
Turkey’s Kurdish militants have sought cover in neighbouring northern Iraq where the presence of the PKK has long been tolerated in Iraq’s Kurdish-ruled region. More fighters also crossed into the area from Turkey as part of the 2013 ceasefire.
Yet the PKK’s relations with the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish authorities in Erbil have been beset by tensions, while Iraqi Kurds have expanded economic cooperation and relations with Turkey.
The office of the region’s president Massoud Barzani said in a statement Saturday that the PKK rebels must “keep the battlefield away from the Kurdistan region” to prevent civilian casualties.
Pro-Kurdish news media said that at least nine civilians were killed on Saturday in a Turkish air raid on a Kurdish village in northern Iraq.
The Turkish foreign ministry promised a “full investigation” into the claims but also accused the PKK of using civilians as “human shields”.
The government has vowed to press on with the over week-long bombing campaign against the PKK, saying on Saturday that “for the peace and security of our people, the fight against terror organisations will continue without interruption”.
The effect of the bombing campaign — which has seen daily raids by dozens of Turkish F-16s on the PKK’s holdouts in remote mountain territory in northern Iraq — remains unclear.
Anatolia published a report on Saturday claiming that the group’s leadership has split into three to protect itself from further air strikes.
One group will stay at its headquarters on Qandil Mountain in northern Iraq, one has gone to a Kurdish-controlled region in Syria and another, including top PKK leader Murat Karayilan, has fled to Iran, it said.
* Agence France-Presse
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