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Clashes leave three children dead in southern Turkey

A boy wounded during clashes in Kurdish-dominated southeast Turkey has died in a hospital, raising the death toll in several days of unrest to four, Turkish media reported yesterday.

Days of violent protests sparked by recent killings of autonomy-seeking Kurdish guerrillas have injured about 270 people.

The child, believed to have been nine or 10 years old, was injured Thursday in the city of Diyarbakir, which has been hit by the region's worst street violence in more than a decade.

The boy died at a hospital, the private NTV television reported. Witnesses said he was wounded by a plastic bullet, the daily Hurriyet newspaper reported.

Authorities would not confirm the reports.

Among three other people reported killed during the unrest was another child, a nine-year-old boy who was struck by a car as he fled the rioting, said Diyarbakir's governor, Efkan Ala. A youth was also crushed to death by an armored personnel carrier, and one person was killed by gunfire, Ala told the Milliyet newspaper.

The region remained tense yesterday as small groups of protesters lit fires in the streets and Turkish police and paramilitary forces were on constant patrol.

A Turkish court formally arraigned 48 protesters in Diyarbakir, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.

In Thursday's violence, hundreds of protesters in Diyarbakir threw firebombs at two banks and shattered the windows of the local police headquarters, as well as a high school and some businesses, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Police fired into the air to scatter the crowds, the report said.

Protests and violence also spread to the nearby city of Batman, where security forces stopped a march by about 2,000 people after firebombs were thrown at businesses.

Protesters also smashed the windows of banks and government offices.

Kurdish guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party have been fighting for autonomy in a war that has left 37,000 people dead in the region since 1984. The group is listed as a terrorist organization by the EU and the US.
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