14 July 2011, Thursday
Turkish officials say Kurdish militants killed a more than dozen soldiers and wounded six others in clashes in the southeastern Diyarbakir Province.
Authorities in Diyarbakir say the rare daylight ambush was the deadliest attack on troops in more than three years. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party has been fighting for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey since 1984. That fighting between Turkish forces and the rebels has killed about 40,000 people.
The state-run Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday that two of the wounded soldiers are in critical condition. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan immediately called a meeting in Ankara with army and intelligence chiefs as well as the interior minister and the head of the paramilitary gendarmerie.