Turkish troops yesterday killed 20 Kurdish guerrillas in a major operation against separatist rebels in eastern Turkey, Army sources said.
The operation involved 8000 troops with air support in the eastern province of Tunceli, hundreds of kilometres from the Iraqi border. The source gave no details of Army
casualties.
Ankara also feels threatened by Kurdish separatists using bases in mountainous northern Iraq for attacks on Turkey, and Turkey's Foreign Minister said a military solution was still on the table to tackle those rebels.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has killed about 40 people in the past month, including 12 soldiers in the latest major attack, and said it took eight Turkish soldiers prisoner.
In Istanbul, police in riot gear and armoured vehicles scuffled with demonstrators calling for the PKK's jailed leader to be freed and protesting against an incursion into northern Iraq.
About 200 people marched through the streets and some protesters hurled petrol bombs.
In nearby Izmit, three people at an anti-PKK demonstration were slightly injured by an explosion which bomb experts were investigating, the state news agency Anatolian reported.
Ankara is under strong domestic pressure to deal with the PKK, but Turkish-Iraqi talks aimed at preventing a cross-border incursion collapsed on Sunday after Ankara rejected Iraq's proposals as insufficient.
Turkey has massed up to 100,000 troops on the border for a possible offensive against an estimated 3000 rebels based in Iraq.
- Reuters
