Reuters.com | Sat Mar 14, 2009

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish investigators found a skull, burnt clothes and bones during excavations at a suspected dumping ground for victims of extra-judicial killings in the south east, state-run Anatolian news agency reported.

Digging began in wells in the town of Silopi several days ago as part of an enquiry into the fate of Kurds who disappeared during clashes with Turkish security forces in the 1990s.

Anatolian late Friday quoted local prosecutors as saying bones and clothing fragments had been found, as well as a skull, and digging had been halted.

Nearly 40,000 people have died in a conflict between Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since 1984 when the rebel group took up arms to establish an ethnic Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey.

Turkey's military has waged offensives both in Turkish territory and across the border in northern Iraq against the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and European Union.

Turkish warplanes struck Kurdish guerrilla targets in northern Iraq on Thursday

According to Turkish media the investigation of the wells began after a former informant from the PKK said people had been murdered by anti-terrorism squads in the 1990s and then buried in wells. Relatives of the missing also filed a complaint with local prosecutors.

(Reporting by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Giles Elgood)