SUSPECTED KURDISH REBELS SET OFF A TRUCK BOMB IN EASTERN TURKEY, 17 INJURED
By Selcan Hacaoglu, Associated Press Writer
Associated Press Worldstream
September 23, 2006 Saturday 8:48 PM GMT
Suspected Kurdish guerrillas set off an explosive-laden minibus across
from a police guest house in eastern Turkey, injuring 17 people on
Saturday, the governor’s office said.
The Ford minibus parked across from the police guest house, went off
in eastern city of Igdir on the Armenian border, the governor’s office
announced. Two of the injured were in serious condition, he said.
The injured included five police officers and some officials of a
small soccer club who traveled from Ankara to Igdir for a match,
private Dogan news agency said. The blast shattered the windows of
the police guest house and other buildings in the area.
"Thank God, we don’t have any loss," Dogan quoted Deputy Gov. Mehmet
Yilmaz as saying.
The explosion coincided with complaints by imprisoned rebel chief
Abdullah Ocalan about his prison conditions, which were relayed by
his lawyers, the pro-Kurdish news agency Firat reported on its Web
site on Saturday.
The attack also comes after recent declaration of cooperation between
Turkey, the United States and Iraq in fighting the guerrillas, who
are based in northern Iraq.
The rebels have recently intensified their attacks across the country
and have so far ignored a recent call by the pro-Kurdish Democratic
Society Party to declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hopes of
establishing dialogue with the state.
Earlier Saturday, autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels detonated a
remote-controlled bomb, derailing a freight train in southeastern
Turkey, officials said. No injuries were reported in that attack which
occurred in the province of Elazig. Seven train carriages derailed
and a total of eight were damaged.
The rebels have also carried out bomb attack in Mediterranean resorts,
killing at least three people and wounding dozens, including 10
Britons in a minibus bombing in the popular resort town of Marmaris
late August.
Ocalan’s guerrilla group has long demanded that Ocalan be moved out of
solitary confinement. Ocalan has been in prison on the prison island
of Imrali, off Istanbul, since his capture on Feb. 15, 1999 in Kenya.
His guerrilla group and supporters have long expressed concern about
Ocalan’s health. But a delegation from the Council of Europe’s
committee for the prevention of torture, which visited Ocalan on
the island in 1999, said the rebel leader’s cell was well lit and
suitably equipped.
Turkey also maintains that doctors closely monitor Ocalan’s health.
The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 37,000 people since
the guerrillas took up arms for autonomy in 1984.
The United States and the European Union have called on Turkey to
improve the economy of the war-ravaged southeastern Turkey to end
the 22-year-old conflict, which has killed 37,000 people. Turkey
insists it will not negotiate with terrorists, vowing to fight until
all rebels are killed or surrender.
Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the Turkish military, recently ruled
out any compromise and said negotiations with "terrorists" were out
of question. Buyukanit said the new cooperation with the United States
was aimed at finishing off the guerillas.
A special U.S. envoy, Retired Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, visited
Ankara earlier this month and assured Turks of Washington’s commitment
to helping Turkey and Iraq confront the Kurdistan Workers Party,
or PKK, which the U.S. lists as a terrorist organization. The PKK is
also labeled as a terrorist group by the EU.
Ralston, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, stressed however
that the use of force against the autonomy-seeking group should be
a last resort.
The bulk of the PKK’s estimated 5,000 guerrillas are thought to be
in Turkey, but many operate in Iraq and Iran.
The guerrillas have benefited from the years of a power vacuum
in northern Iraq to stage cross-border offensives in Turkey’s
Kurdish-dominated southeast as Turkey complained of lack of U.S.
support in fighting the rebels while Turkish soldiers served in
Afghanistan to support the U.S.-led war against global terrorism.
The appointment of Ralston came after Turkey issued thinly veiled
threats to stage a unilateral cross-border offensive into northern
Iraq to hunt down Kurdish rebels.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. officials have
repeatedly warned Turkey against entering northern Iraq, one of the
few stable areas in that country, fearing that an incursion would
alienate Iraqi Kurds, the most pro-American group in the region.