By Xinhua
Ankara : A member of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) surrendered to the Turkish security forces while another was captured in southeastern Turkey, a Turkish military statement said on Friday.
The statement posted on the Turkish Chief of General Staff’s website said that one PKK militant surrendered in the southeastern province of Batman on Thursday, while Turkey’s security forces detained the other one in another southeastern province of Hakkari on Wednesday.
The security forces also seized 600 grams of C-4 explosive, two automatic rifles, ammunition and three hand grenades during operations, said the statement.
The Turkish military has massed up to 100,000 troops near the mountainous Iraqi border and has recently launched several cross-border attacks to battle separatist PKK rebels, who use northern Iraq as a launch pad for attacks against Turkey.
The PKK, listed by the United States and Turkey as a terrorist group, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.