Pakistan attack kills 10 Turkish soldiers

Kurdish militants fired rockets at a military convoy in eastern Turkey on Tuesday, killing ten soldiers and wounding more than 60, security sources said, in a further sign that the conflict in the region is deepening. The convoy was travelling between the provinces of Bingol and Mus when it was hit by a rocket launched by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the sources said. The PKK is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and European Union. It took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state in the east of Turkey. The conflict has since killed more than 40,000 people. Footage aired by Turkey’s Dogan news agency on its website showed firefighters around the smouldering shell of a bus on a mountainous road. Two F-16 fighter jets took off from an air base in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir after the attack, a witness said. Their destination was unclear. Recent months have seen some of the deadliest fighting in more than a decade. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday some 500 militants had been “rendered ineffective” — killed, wounded, or captured — in the last month alone. Fighter jets and attack helicopters have bombarded PKK camps in the southeastern border region with Iraq, and Turkey’s chief of staff and other military commanders travelled to the region last week to oversee operations. Eight police officers were killed on Sunday when a roadside mine exploded in the Karliova district of Bingol and on Saturday suspected PKK fighters killed four Turkish soldiers in an attack on a convoy near the border with Iran and Iraq. As well as the human toll, the conflict has hampered economic development in one of Turkey’s poorest corners and worsened instability in the region bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria. More than 700 people have been killed since a parliamentary election in June last year, making this the deadliest period since the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, the International Crisis Group said in a report this month. Moreover, eight people were arrested in Denmark on Tuesday suspected of “terror funding” for raising money for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Danish police said. “Eight people in total, ranging from the ages 27 to 71 years, were arrested. It cannot be ruled out that this case may lead to further arrests both domestically and internationally,” police said in a statement. The eight were suspected of “raising and distributing funds for the terrorist organisation PKK. The funds in question amount to between 27 million and 140 million kroner” (3.62-18.8 million euros, $4.72-24.5 million), it said. Police did not identify the eight suspects, but said the probe focused on a group of individuals, most of them Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin who reside in Denmark. The money was raised mainly in Kurdish business circles in Denmark, police said. The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in the Kurdish-majority southeast of Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed 45,000 lives. Danish police said the alleged fundraising was discovered as part of a separate investigation into Roj TV, a Copenhagen-based Kurdish TV network that Turkey has accused of being the PKK’s mouthpiece. A Danish court in January found Roj TV guilty of “promoting terrorism.”