ANKARA, 23 July 2005 — Kurdish rebels claimed yesterday they had downed a Turkish helicopter in the southeast, while the army said four soldiers were injured when a chopper went out of control due to an undetermined “incident”.
The rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has recently stepped up its campaign of violence in the region, said in a statement that a Sikorsky helicopter “was hit and downed by the guerrillas” during clashes in a mountainous area in Hakkari province.
“The helicopter, which was transporting personnel to the operation area, was destroyed together with the soldiers in it,” said the statement on the website of the MHA news agency, which carries PKK statements.
The Turkish Army, meanwhile, said four soldiers were injured, two of them seriously, when a Sikorsky helicopter operating in the same area “went out of control while landing as a result of an incident that occurred in its tail section due to a yet undetermined cause, and sustained damage.” A probe was under way to determine what caused the incident, it added.
Meanwhile, the Turkish police believe that a deadly bomb blast in a seaside resort at the weekend was the work of the rebel PKK even though the group has denied involvement, a senior police official said in Ankara yesterday. “The evidence obtained and all our experience point at the PKK,” Ismail Caliskan, the security department spokesman, said. “We have no doubts.” Five people, among them a young British woman and an Irish teenager, were killed and 13 others injured last Saturday when a bomb explosion tore apart a minibus in the Aegean resort of Kusadasi, popular with British tourists.
The blast came only a week after some 20 people were injured in a bomb explosion in the nearby resort of Cesme, which a little known group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), claimed, threatening more attacks on touristic targets. The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group also by the United States and the European Union, denied any involvement in the Kusadasi blast, while TAK made no statement.
