By Xinhua
Ankara : The death toll in a terrorist attack in southeastern Turkey rose to 13 after the body of a seven-year-old boy named Medeni Akdogan was found, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Sunday.
Preliminary reports said that 12 people were killed and two others wounded when members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) ambushed a minivan near Besagac village of Beytussebap town in Sirnak province late on Saturday night.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul condemned the attack in a statement, saying that “nobody or no power can harm our country’s union and indivisible integrity.”
Expressing his deep sorrow over the incident, Gul said, “I strongly condemn this inhuman attack which has once more showed the real face of terrorism in a bitter way.”
Gul added that these malevolent attacks targeting Turkish security forces and civilians would strengthen the state’s determination to fight against terrorism.
The ambush came only one day after Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay and his visiting Iraqi counterpart Jawad al-Bulani signed an anti-terrorism agreement aimed at cracking down on PKK separatist rebels.
The PKK has increased attacks on Turkish troops in southeastern Turkey, which led to rising Turkish demands for an incursion into northern Iraq to crush the rebels based there.
The group, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.