By Xinhua
Ankara : About ten members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) surrendered to Turkish security forces in the southeastern province of Sirnak, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Friday.
The Turkish General Staff said in a statement posted on its website that ten PKK members escaped from their camps based in northern Iraq and surrendered to the Turkish military on Thursday, adding that the number of PKK members who surrendered in the past 30 days has reached 21.
The Turkish military has recently launched several cross-border attacks to fight against PKK separatists, who use the Kurdish autonomous region in 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.