Kurdish rebels attack soldiers guarding Turkish opposition party head

PanARMENIAN.Net - Kurdish rebels opened fire Thursday, August 25 at security forces protecting a convoy of vehicles carrying Turkey's main opposition party leader in the northeast, wounding three soldiers, Turkey's interior minister said, according to the Associated Press.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Republican People's Party, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that he was safe and had been taken to a government building in Artvin province.

Private NTV showed tense scenes at the site of the attack, with plainclothes security officers pointing their guns toward the hills above a road where Kilicdaroglu's motorcade was traveling and people hiding behind cars.

Interior Minister Efkan Ala blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, for Thursday's attack. He said the assailants targeted a paramilitary police vehicle that was protecting Kilicdaroglu's motorcade. Its driver was seriously hurt, while two other soldiers were slightly wounded.

Ala said the security forces immediately began an operation against the rebels in the region.

"It is definitely the PKK and an operation has started against them," Ala said, according to AP.

Violence between the PKK and Turkish security forces resumed last year after the collapse of a peace process.