By Xinhua,
Ankara : Members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) kidnapped three German mountaineers in eastern Turkey, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Wednesday.
The three Germans were nabbed from a group of 13 mountaineers by five PKK rebels, who raided their camp at a height of 3,200 meters of altitude on the Mount Agri, Governor Mehmet Cetin of Agri was quoted as saying by the semi-official Anatolia news agency.
The group of German mountaineers, headed by a guide, got a legal permit to climb Mount Agri in Agri province and arrived in this province three days ago, added the governor.
“Terrorists told the mountaineers that they were staging the attack to protest the initiatives that the German government has launched recently against both the organization and people who support the organization of PKK,” the governor said.
Cetin also said that the gendarmery had launched a wide-scale search and rescue operation, and the other mountaineers had been brought to the Dogubayazit town in the province.
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. About 40,000 people have been killed in the over-two-decade conflict.