Security forces killed 20 Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey while a rebel attack killed three Turkish soldiers, the military said on Wednesday, as authorities widened a curfew in the mainly Kurdish region’s largest city, Diyarbakir.
The southeast has endured the worst violence in two decades since a 2-1/2-year-old ceasefire between the state and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants collapsed in July, reviving a conflict that has killed 40,000 people since 1984.
The army said 11 PKK members died in the town of Cizre, near the Syrian border, and nine more in Diyarbakir’s Sur district on Tuesday, bringing the militant death toll in the two towns to some 600 since security operations began there last month.
Security sources said militants in Sur wounded two police officers when they opened fire with rifles and also wounded six soldiers in a rocket-launcher attack. The military said three of the soldiers subsequently died.
