Kurdish militants fire on restaurant killing waiter and wounding police
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Version 0 of 1. Kurdish militants killed a waiter and wounded three officers in an armed attack on a restaurant in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey’s main city,as the restive region descended further into the worst bloodshed it has seen since the 1990s. The 22-year-old waiter, who had returned from compulsory military service two months ago, was shot in the head as he served bread to a table of police officers on Friday, one of whom was critically wounded. The attack came as Turkish jets bombed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq for a fifth night straight, while the leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition accused security forces of a shoot-to-kill policy in another town under a week-long curfew. Hundreds of militants and members of the security forces have died since hostilities resumed between the PKK and the state after the collapse of a ceasefire in July, shattering a peace process launched in 2012 to end a three-decade conflict which has killed 40,000 people, the majority of them Kurdish militants. Related: Turkish forces stop pro-Kurdish MPs on protest march to Cizre The government resumed air strikes against the PKK two months ago in response to what it described as a sharp escalation in attacks on security forces and shootings in urban centres. The prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, has promised the fight will go on until “not one terrorist is left”. “If this war were to last another 100 years, the PKK would still be there and the Turkish army would still be there,” Selahattin Demirtaş, head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) said in a speech at a party meeting. “Fingers should be taken off the trigger. The guns must fall silent to allow for conditions to resume negotiations.” More than 15 warplanes struck PKK targets in Qandil, Zap and Avashin in the mountains of northern Iraq for five hours early on Friday, one security source said. A round-the-clock curfew in the town of Cizre has since entered its eighth day. Pro-Kurdish politicians say 21 civilians have been killed and a humanitarian crisis has unfolded, with the dead going unburied and food and water running short. Demirtaş said special forces, acting on the local governor’s orders, were shooting anyone venturing out on the street. “Kurds are getting the death penalty,” he said. Related: Kurdish civilians hit by snipers as Turkey cracks down on militants Turkey’s interior minister, Selami Altinok, said on Thursday that only one civilian had died in Cizre and that military operations there had killed dozens of militants. A group of HDP lawmakers was also denied access to the town. Nils Muižnieks, human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, said there were reports of a disproportionate use of force and called for immediate access for observers to Cizre, a town of around 100,000 people near the Syrian and Iraqi borders. State authorities also imposed an overnight curfew in the town of Yuksekova near the Iranian border due to what they said was increased militant activity. |