ANKARA: An improvised bomb attack on a military vehicle killed two soldiers in southeast Turkey on Saturday, with state media blaming Kurdish separatists.
The blast came in the province of Batman, according to the Anadolu news agency, which said the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was behind the attack.
Turkey was already in mourning on Saturday for a 15-year-old killed by PKK militants on Friday in the northeastern city of Trabzon.
Kurdish-dominated southeast Turkey has been hit by near-daily violence since the conflict between the PKK and the government flared up in 2015, ending a fragile cease-fire.
The PKK, which has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984, is classed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the US.
Also on Saturday, police arrested three men suspected of carrying out murders on behalf of Daesh.
Police conducted simultaneous operations in the southeastern provinces of Sanliurfa and Gaziantep as well as eastern Malatya province.
Polcie said the three men were thought to have been part of a “Daesh execution team.”
The counter-terror operations followed an investigation into a drive-by shooting of a Syrian national in Sanliurfa last month. The gun used in that attack was found on the suspects.
The suspects used chats in phone gaming applications to communicate with Daesh members, according to private Dogan news agency.
The men were thought to have been planning attacks on people working against Daesh.
Kurdish separatists blamed for killing of soldiers
Kurdish separatists blamed for killing of soldiers
Helicopter crashes in Libya during medical evacuation, killing 3
- The Matan Al-Sarra air base lies in an area under the control of Libya’s Benghazi-based eastern administration led by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, but authorities in the east did not comment on the crash
TRIPOLI: A helicopter has crashed in southeastern Libya, killing a medic and two crew members carrying out a medical evacuation, state media said Tuesday.
Libyan news agency LANA said the chopper went down overnight near an air base in the Kufra region about 60 kilometers north of the border between Libya and Chad.
The aircraft was attempting to evacuate a soldier who had been involved in a road accident in the desert, LANA said.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known and it was unclear what happened to the injured soldier.
Libyan media reports said two foreign nationals were among those on board who were killed, but this was not confirmed by authorities.
The Matan Al-Sarra air base lies in an area under the control of Libya’s Benghazi-based eastern administration led by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, but authorities in the east did not comment on the crash.
Libya remains split between the eastern administration and a UN-backed government in the west led by Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah. The LANA news agency is under the control of western authorities.
Libya has struggled to recover from chaos that erupted following a 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi.
