The terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) staged an attack on a gendarmerie command building in the Ovacık district of the southeastern Tunceli province on Friday evening, using missiles and machine guns.
A group of PKK members hijacked a car and drove down to the district gendarmerie command in the Kandolar neighborhood of Ovacık at around 8:00 p.m. Assailants got out of the car and opened fire on the building. Two of the missiles fired by them hit the walls of a guardhouse. A clash broke out after the security forces returned fire. After a conflict of around five minutes, the attackers got back in their car and fled the scene towards the Munzur Valley.
No casualties have been reported. A large-scale operation has been launched in the area to locate and capture the PKK members.
The PKK is designated as a “terrorist organization” by the United States (US) and the European Union (EU), as well as Turkey. The 32-year-old conflict, which has claimed more than 40,000 lives, halted in March 2013 as part of the settlement process initiated between the PKK and the Turkish government. However, the PKK ended the ceasefire in the summer of 2015.