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| Europe |
| Two Turk Soldiers Dead in Kurdish Attack on Convoy |
| 2003-07-08 |
| Kurdish guerrillas ambushed a convoy of vehicles carrying a provincial governor on Tuesday killing two soldiers in a 10-minute firefight in the troubled southeast of Turkey which borders Iraq, officials said. The timing of this is awful handy for the Turks, don't you think? Another Turkish soldier was injured in the attack launched by around 10 gunmen from dense forest surrounding a narrow road some 22 miles east of the town of Tunceli, according to a Reuters reporter traveling in the convoy. Just happened to have a embedded reporter with them? Turkey has launched several operations in recent weeks to track down hundreds of Kurdish militants it says are returning from the mountains of northern Iraq to Turkey after the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein earlier this year. Many vehicles were strafed with heavy machinegun fire, which ricocheted off the tarmac in front of the 13-vehicle convoy. In front of the convoy? The Kurds shoot better than that.Blood and broken glass were scattered over the mountain road after the firefight that ended when the guerrillas fled. Disappeared without a trace. Tunceli governor Ali Cafer Akyuz, the target of the attack, escaped unharmed, officials said. Some 5,000 soldiers with air support were mobilized in the hunt for the assailants, none of whom were reported killed or injured during the clash near Tunceli which is around 300 km (190 miles) from Iraq. Like I said, no trace of the attackers. Turkey's powerful military has fought a decades-long battle against armed Kurdish separatists at the cost of around 30,000 lives, most of them Kurds. The fighting has largely subsided since the 1999 capture of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of rebel group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), now known as KADEK. "I bitterly condemn this treacherous attack," President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said in a statement. "The Turkish Republic will decisively destroy all efforts against the nation's indivisible unity." If I had a suspicious mind, I might think this attack was staged. Turkey stations more than 1,000 soldiers inside the border with northern Iraq in a controversial deployment it says is necessary to guard its territory from attack by KADEK militants. And now we have a justification. Handy, ain't it? |
| Posted by:Steve |