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Landmines kill two in southeast Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, July 30, 2006 (AFP) - Two people, including a teenager, were killed in the restive southeast of Turkey in two landmine explosions blamed on armed Kurdish rebels, security sources said Sunday.

One of the explosions hit a group of children collecting firewood near Genc, Bingol, on Sunday, the sources said.

A 14-year-old teenager was killed on the spot, while three companions, aged 15 and 16, were injured.

In the neighbouring province of Diyarbakir, a government-paid militia member was killed in a roadside explosion late Saturday as a group of village guards -- Kurdish men recruited to support the army in the fight against the rebels -- were travelling to their watch posts.

A first explosion did not cause any casualties or damage to the vehicle, but as the guards left the car to inspect the blast site, a second landmine went off, killing a 35-year-old man, the sources said.

In the eastern province of Agri, a group of rebels attacked police lodgings with guns and hand grenades Sunday, injuring six police officers and a civilian, the Anatolia news agency reported.

After a brief shootout, the assailants fled in the darkness, the report said.

Violence has been on the rise in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast and east since June 2004, when the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) called off a five-year unilateral truce.

In response, the Turkish army has intensified its operations against PKK rebels.

Ankara, which says the PKK uses neighboring northern Iraq as a springboard for attacks inside Turkey, has threatened a cross-border operation if Washington and Baghdad fail to crack down on the organisation regarded as a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

More than 37,000 people have been killed since 1984, when the PKK took up arms for self-rule.