PKK stages suicide attack in E Turkey-sources
Source: Reuters
(Adds background) TUNCELI, Turkey, June 23 (Reuters) - Two Kurdish militants rammed an oil-filled truck into a Turkish police station on Saturday in a suicide attack, army sources said, marking a sharp escalation of separatist violence. After the explosion other members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) attacked the station in the eastern province of Tunceli and the army responded with an operation supported from the air, the sources said. The two militants in the truck were killed but no further details were available on the death toll. The armed forces have called for an operation into northern Iraq to deal with militants based there and a large attack could increase pressure on the government to agree to one. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who faces elections next month, has said he agrees with the army over northern Iraq, and that an operation could be launched if necessary, but has not reconvened parliament to approve such a move. The United States, which like Ankara considers the PKK a terrorist organisation, has said it opposes a cross-border operation into relatively stable northern Iraq. Saturday's attack comes just weeks after militants killed seven paramilitary policemen at a station in the same province, in which a militant was also killed. The gendarme paramilitary police work alongside the army in the troubled east and are responsible for security in rural areas. That attack was part of a wider escalation of violence in the recent months in which dozens of soldiers and paramilitary police have been killed. Army figures showed on Saturday that the PKK has carried out 76 attacks with mines and other explosives in the last six months alone. The PKK, which has been fighting for a homeland since 1984, was also blamed for a deadly suicide bombing in Ankara last month. Earlier on Saturday around 2,000 people marched through Istanbul protesting against the increasing violence, following a call from Turkey's popular and powerful army for the public to show a mass response to PKK attacks.
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