A Turkish soldier was killed and three more were wounded in a landmine explosion yesterday, putting further pressure on Turkey's government just one day after Kurdish rebels shot dead 13 Turkish troops.
The increased attacks on security personnel in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey have reignited talk of a major Turkish military incursion into neighboring northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels who use the region as a base.
Yesterday's blast occurred in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province, security sources who declined to be named said.
Remotely controlled landmines are a favored weapon of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), whose attacks Turkish media say have claimed nearly 100 lives this year alone.
Abdul-Rahman al-Chadarchi, a spokesman for the Kurdish rebel group, confirmed the attack and said the rebel fighters sustained no casualties.
"A cross-border operation [into Iraq] is on the table," said the top-selling Hurriyet daily following Sunday's incident, the worst in years, in Sirnak province near the Iraqi border.
"We are not concerned with this issue because these clashes and shelling happened inside Turkish territories. This is a Turkish internal problem," Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the government of Iraq's Kurdish region, said after Sunday's attack.
Turkey's powerful armed forces have long called for a cross-border operation, but Washington fears such a move could destabilize Kurdish northern Iraq, the only relatively stable part of that country.
Turkey is a key NATO ally of Washington.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, speaking on Sunday evening, said his government would press the fight against Kurdish rebels "in a very different way," hinting that it might now send troops into Iraq to crush an estimated 3,000 PKK rebels based there.
Erdogan said the government's anti-terrorism panel would meet yesterday to assess the latest events.
Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group began its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. The PKK is branded a terrorist organization by the US and the EU.
Turkey's military on Sunday designated 27 "security zones" off limits to civilians in eastern and southeastern regions where the borders with Iraq and Iran converge. Starting today, the zones will be in place until Dec. 10.
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