Nine members of the outlawed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have been “neutralized” in military operations in Siirt province, while eight others who were preparing for a bomb attack were detained in Gaziantep province, Hürriyet reported on Friday.
According to a statement by the Turkish military, nine PKK members were killed in the Pervari region of Siirt during an aerial attack by the air forces.
Eight other terrorists including two Syrians were detained with 146 kilograms of explosives ahead of an attack in Gaziantep, the provincial governor’s office announced on Friday.
Turkish authorities had conducted direct talks with jailed PKK chief Abdullah Öcalan for several years until a truce in effect collapsed in the summer of 2015. Since then, there have been heavy clashes between the PKK and Turkish security forces.