TUNCELI, Turkey, 10 July 2005 — Three Turkish soldiers were killed and eight wounded yesterday when their vehicle hit a land mine suspected of being planted by Kurdish rebels in Turkey’s southeast, security sources said. The soldiers were in Hakkari, a remote province bordering Iran and Iraq. The military has launched a sweeping operation along the full stretch of the Iraqi border in Hakkari and the neighboring province of Sirnak, a military official said.

“A large-scale operation with between 3,000 and 4,000 troops backed by air support is continuing,” he said. Rebels from the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have stepped up their attacks on military and strategic targets after calling off their unilateral cease-fire in June 2004.

In the last week, the PKK claimed responsibility for two separate explosions that hit railway lines in eastern Turkey. Six security guards died in the first attack on a postal train. “PKK militants are bringing C-4 plastic explosives and other materials across the Iraqi border,” the official said. “They are engaging in the low-risk tactic of detonating bombs and mines by remote control in attacks on military vehicles in the region.”

The PKK launched an armed campaign against the Turkish state in 1984 in a bid to establish an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast. More than 30,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died in the conflict. Violence fell off sharply with the 1999 capture of PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan, now serving a life sentence in a Turkish prison. But the end of the cease-fire has threatened to wreck the impoverished southeast’s fragile peace. The Interior Ministry said this week 164 PKK rebels had been killed since the group called off the truce.

Meanwhile, another seven people in eastern Turkey have contracted anthrax after eating contaminated meat in an outbreak that has hit 42 people, but no fatalities have been reported, officials said yesterday. Health authorities have quarantined the village of Cukurca in Bingol province, where the outbreak began earlier this week. Thirteen people remain in hospital, including a 10-year-old boy and his sister, 9, who are in critical condition, officials told the Anatolian news agency.

“Despite all of our warnings, we are receiving information that the villagers are continuing to eat contaminated meat,” Bingol health director Selahattin Saridag told Anatolian.

Authorities have combed butchers’ shops and private homes and destroyed contaminated meat, and no live animals are being allowed to enter or leave Cukurca.

One resident said earlier this week that around 85 sheep and goats had died in Cukurca in recent days but that the local veterinarian had assured villagers it was still safe to eat the meat.