Clashes between Turkish forces and Kurdish militants kill three police

Diyarbakir, Turkey // Three policemen were killed by Kurdish militants on Sunday in two separate attacks in Turkey’s south-east, as weeks of violence showed no sign of abating.

The clashes in Diyarbakir, the region’s largest city, prompted authorities to impose a curfew.

Two officers were killed and five wounded on a highway outside the south-eastern city of Sirnak in a car bomb attack carried out by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), security sources said.

Turkish forces backed up by helicopters and commandos shelled a mountainous area where the Kurdish fighters had fled after the checkpoint attack, killing six of them, the sources added.

Meanwhile, one policeman was killed and one more wounded in a rocket attack carried out by the PKK in the Silvan district of the south-eastern region of Diyarbakir.

The authorities on Sunday imposed a curfew in several districts of Silvan after the deadly attack on police, Turkish media said.

The Diyarbakir governor’s office said it had placed the central historic Sur district under a round-the-clock curfew after seven police officers were reportedly wounded in clashes there.

In other central areas of the city, police fired tear gas and water cannon at small groups of youths who threw stones and tried to set up street barricades in protest against the curfew.

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, called for the Turkish state and PKK leadership across the border in Iraq’s Qandil mountains to halt the violence and return to peace talks.

“Both Ankara and Qandil must take a position that responds to the people’s expectation with a clear, concrete project,” he said. “Even if the peace [talks] table has been upturned it is in our power to put it up again.”

Hundreds of militants and more than 100 police and soldiers have died since a ceasefire collapsed in July, shattering a peace process launched in 2012.

Since then, Ankara has used air power and ground forces in a self-declared “anti-terror” operation to try to cripple the PKK in its strongholds in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.

But the group has hit back, killing dozens of Turkish police and soldiers in almost daily attacks. It is the worst violence Turkey has seen in two decades.

A week-long curfew in the town of Cizre, near the borders with Syria and Iraq, was lifted on Friday. The HDP has said 21 civilians were killed during clashes in the town, while the government said one civilian and 32 militants died.

Thousands gathered in the town on Sunday for the funerals of 16 of the people who were killed during the week and who were buried alongside each other, witnesses said.

The PKK, which is fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy, is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised the fight will go on until “not one terrorist is left”. * Agence France-Presse and Reuters