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Turkish police clash with pro-Kurd rebel mourners
Tue 28 Mar 2006 10:15 AM ET

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, March 28 (Reuters) - A number of people were injured on Tuesday when mourners at a funeral for slain Kurdish militants clashed with police in Turkey's restive southeast.

The clashes occurred at funeral ceremonies for 14 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed last weekend by security forces during a military operation in the region.

In Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's southeast, youths hurled Molotov cocktails and stones at armoured personnel carriers. Police, many of them wielding riot shields, used teargas and truncheons against the protesters.

The demonstrators, waving PKK flags and pictures of jailed rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, broke windows of nearby offices and shops.

More police and troops were drafted into Diyarbakir to help restore order, Turkish television said.

The state Anatolian news agency said five policemen and three Turkish journalists were among those injured. One of the policemen was in a serious condition, it said.

Police and protesters also clashed during a funeral ceremony in the city of Adana near the Mediterranean coast.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed struggle for an independent Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

The PKK is also classed as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States. An estimated 5,000 rebels are holed up in the mountains of mainly Kurdish northern Iraq.




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