ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s security forces have killed as many as 115 Kurdish rebels during a major security offensive during the past two weeks, the country’s interior minister said Sunday.
Idris Naim Sahin said the rebels were killed in an airpower-backed offensive near the town of Semdinli, in Hakkari Province along the border with Iraq. He said the offensive began July 23.
Sahin provided few details of the ongoing operation but said the security forces were trying to block the rebels’ escape routes into northern Iraq.
Private NTV television said earlier that as many as 2,000 troops were involved in the offensive and that public access to some roads in the region were blocked.
Earlier Sunday, rebels fired on military posts in Hakkari province, including the paramilitary station near the village of Gecimli, about 12 miles from the frontier, according to a statement from the Hakkari governor’s office.
Governor Orhan Alimoglu said that attack led to clashes that killed 22 rebels, soldiers, and village guards. At least 15 soldiers, another village guard, and five civilians were also injured in the attack.
The attack comes some six weeks after a similar raid on a military unit, also in Hakkari Province, killed 18 rebels and eight soldiers, prompting Turkey’s military to send warplanes and attack helicopters to hit Kurdish rebel targets inside Iraq.
The rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, are fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast and maintain bases in northern Iraq from where they launch hit-and-run attacks on Turkish targets. The rebels took up arms in 1984.