2 Kurdish rebels killed in southeastern Turkey

Two Kurdish rebels died Saturday in Turkey’s southeastern Diyarbakir city in a shootout after a police raid on their hideout, police said. The members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members refused to heed a police call to surrender and threw grenades, television reports said. A local police official said two rebels died in an ensuing gun battle and added that two rifles and three hand grenades had been seized. Police said the fingerprints of the dead men revealed they were among the perpetrators of a recent attack in the Kurdish-dominated area that left two police officers dead. The PKK, which took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives, is labeled a terrorist outfit by Ankara and much of the international community. The raid comes after a botched Turkish strike in the region which killed 35 Kurdish civilians, prompting the PKK to issue a call for an “uprising.” Turkey’s military command said it carried out the air strike after a spy drone spotted a group moving toward its sensitive southeastern border under cover of darkness late Wednesday, in an area known to be used by militants. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted Friday that the victims were smugglers and not separatist rebels as the army had originally claimed.