Turkish warplanes pounded suspected Kurdish rebel targets in southeast Turkey today in retaliation to a rebel mortar attack at a military base which wounded a 6-year-old girl, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
The jets struck Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, positions near the town of Daglica, in Hakkari province hours after the insurgents fired shots and mortar rounds at the station. The girl, from a nearby village, was injured by shrapnel, but wasn't in serious condition.
Hostilities have flared in Turkey in the past two weeks, wrecking a fragile peace process launched in 2012 with the Kurds. The rebels have launched dozens of attacks against country's security forces while the military has carried out air strikes on PKK targets in northern Iraq or in Turkey's southeast. At least 30 people have been killed in the past 10 days, most of them soldiers.
Earlier, PKK rebels attacked a military vehicle in neighboring Sirnak province with an improvised explosive device and later opened fire at the vehicle, killing two soldiers, the military said. Another soldier and a government-paid village guard were wounded in the attack near the village of Arakoy, in Sirnak province which borders Iraq.
Meanwhile, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said the PKK sabotaged a natural gas pipeline from Azerbaijan early today, disrupting the flow of gas. It was the latest in a series of attacks on Turkish energy supply lines that included an explosion on a major oil pipeline from Iraq.
