ANKARA, 14 May 2006 — A bomb explosion killed three children and badly wounded another in eastern Turkey yesterday, Anatolia news agency reported.
It said the bomb went off in the garage of a local official at Ulalar, in Erzincan, killing two boys aged about 10 who were playing nearby.
A third boy, aged 12, died of his injuries in hospital. There was no claim of responsibility and the authorities said they did not know what was the reason for the explosion. Kurdish separatist rebels are active in the area but local media said it could have been linked to a family feud.
Earlier, provincial authorities said four soldiers and a Kurdish rebel were killed yesterday in an operation by the Turkish Army against the PKK near the Iraqi border.
Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched an armed campaign for a Kurdish homeland covering most of eastern Turkey in 1984. The clash occurred on Mount Kupeli in southeastern Sirnak province, the governor’s office in Sirnak announced.
The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has been battling for autonomy for more than two decades in Turkey’s southeast. The clashes have killed some 37,000 people since 1984. The group is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.
Clashes have intensified recently and more than 40 rebels, and some 20 soldiers have been killed in fighting since the start of the year.
The Turkish military has massed tens of thousands of additional troops in the region to fight Kurdish guerillas and prevent rebel infiltration into Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.
Meanwhile, thousands of Kurdish refugees of the 1980s Iran-Iraq War want UN recognition of their status and to return to the Iranian town from which they were driven, one of their representatives said yesterday.
“We want to go back under United Nations supervision, but Iran does not accept us and we have no status under the UN,” said Mahmoud Azizi, a member of a committee representing 223 Kurdish-Iranian families in Camp Qawa in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Arbil.
The Kurds were driven from their homes in Iran’s Kasr Shirin village at the start of Saddam Hussein’s war against the Islamic Republic in 1981 by Baathist forces. They were resettled in what is today the predominantly Sunni Arab province of Al-Anbar.
The Kurds fled Anbar, where they were harassed and attacked by insurgents, to Kurdistan at the end of 2005. But some 25 families remain in the desert region, said Mansur Abdallah, a 21-year-old camp resident.
“The situation grew worse for us there after the fall of the regime. Here most of the young people are unemployed. We lack basic goods,” Abdallah said.
A Kurdish government official said the refugees were ready to accept any form of recognition so that they could qualify for more assistance.
“These people want to go back to Iran, but they would settle for political asylum in Iraq,” said Deiyar Zibari, the Kurdish provincial government’s UN liaison. Zibari said the Kurdish regional government was prepared to build homes for the refugees with UN assistance if and when they were given an official status by the UN’s refugee agency.
In another development, the jailed Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan threatened to “intensify” the armed struggle of his PKK, the pro-PKK Firsat news agency reported yesterday.
“The PKK cannot be eliminated by violence, it will strengthen its numbers, the fight will intensify. We are warning you,” the agency quoted Ocalan as telling his lawyers at the jail where he is held in Imrali, northwestern Turkey.
