Suspected Kurdish militant attack kills four workers in southeastern Turkey

Turkey has blamed a roadside bomb that killed four construction workers near the southern border on the outlawed PKK.

2 min read

18 June, 2020

Southeastern Turkey has been the epicentre of a 36-year Kurdish insurgency and government counter-insurgency [Getty]

Four construction workers were killed in the troubled southeast of the country on Wednesday evening as their pick-up truck was struck by a roadside bomb, the local governor's office confirmed.

The office claimed the bomb had been laid by militants belonging to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), although the group has not yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack occurred in the Kurtik Tepe area of Turkey's Silopi district, close to the borders with Iraq and Syria.

The truck was transporting fuel for road construction, the governor's office added.

The PKK has waged an 36-year-long insurgency against the Turkish state and its oppression of the Kurdish people.

Turkey and its Western allies has listed the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the ensuing conflict, the vast majority of whom were Kurdish civilians killed by the Turkish forces in southeast Turkey.

Although violence has resurged since a ceasefire broke down in July 2015, the PKK usually targets security forces.

Ankara regularly targets alleged PKK militants and affiliate groups, both in its Kurdish-majority southeast and in northern Iraq, where it says the group's leadership is based.

Read more: Enemy of my enemy: Turkey's rivals are normalising Assad's regime with an eye on Ankara

The Turkish armed forces said on Thursday it had destroyed more than 500 alleged PKK militant positions in northern Iraq during a 36-hour operation against the group.

Turkey also launched an operation aimed to push out Kurds and Kurdish forces from the border areas with Syria in 2018, killed scores of civilians and sparked the mass displacement of Kurds out of Afrin, which some have equated to ethnic cleansing.

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