Three soldiers, 11 Kurdish rebels killed in Turkey clashes

Three Turkish soldiers and at least 11 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) have been killed in clashes in Turkey's restive eastern and southeastern regions, state officials said today.
Meanwhile the authorities have maintained a controversial curfew in the flashpoint southeastern town of Silvan, which has been under a military lockdown for 11 days.
The PKK militants were killed on Thursday in fighting with Turkish security forces during an operation in the Cizre and Silopi districts of southeastern Sirnak province, the provincial governor's office said in a statement Friday.
In the Van region of eastern Turkey close to the border with Iran, security forces launched a dawn raid on Friday following a tipoff that PKK militants were hiding in a house in the Ercis district, the army said in a statement on its website.

One soldier was killed and three others wounded after militants opened fire with long-range weapons from inside the house, the army said.
Also today, two soldiers were killed in a mine explosion on a road in the Lice district of the southeastern Diyarbakir region blamed on the PKK, Turkish media said.

The deaths were the latest in a new wave of unrest that has rocked Turkey's mainly Kurdish regions since a two-year-old PKK truce fell apart in July, leaving over 150 members of the security forces and hundreds of suspected militants dead.
Hurriyet newspaper reported on Friday that some 10,000 residents had fled the battered town of Silvan, where local MPs have warned of dire shortages of water, food and electricity.

There have been reports of several fatalities, including both police police and civilians, as Turkish forces battle to wrest control of three districts of Silvan from militants belonging to the youth wing of the PKK.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday the anti-PKK offensive in the town was "largely complete", but added: "It will continue until peace has been restored in each neighbourhood of Silvan."
"No one should test our determination," he told reporters in Ankara.
Last Thursday, the PKK ended a unilateral truce it had declared before the November 1 election, which saw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) win back a parliamentary majority.

Erdogan subsequently vowed to press on with the fight against the PKK until all its fighters are "wiped out.