Turkish commandos backed by helicopters deployed along the Iraqi border on Monday after 11 soldiers died in weekend clashes with Kurdish rebels in one of the worst attacks in recent years in Turkey’s separatist war.
In Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan chaired an emergency security meeting with military leaders as pressure mounted for the government to rein in an escalation of violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
State news agency Anatolian said elite troops rappelled down from helicopters and poured out of mechanised infantry units to surround Kurdish rebels in an operation along the Iraqi border.
Kurdish rebels have bases in northern Iraq.
Helicopter gunships bombed suspected positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrilla group in the mountains in the provinces of Hakkari and Sirnak, security sources said.
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Poland faces July 4 run-off in elections
Warsaw, June 21: Poles will vote in a July 4 run-off in an election forced by the air-crash death of President Lech Kaczynski, pitting his conservative twin brother against the ruling liberals’ candidate.
Near-complete results from the national electoral commission showed that Parliamentary Speaker and acting President Bronislaw Komorowski took 41.22 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s first round. Conservative Opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who launched an audacious bid to replace his brother and close political ally, came second with 36.74 per cent. Turnout was just short of 55 per cent. The snap election came after Lech Kaczynski died on April 10 in western Russia along with 95 others. —AFP
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French prisoner killed cellmate, ate his lung
London, June 21: In a gruesome incident, a French prisoner allegedly killed his cellmate and then sliced open his chest with a razor blade to remove and eat his heart, a court was told.
But the man allegedly removed the wrong organ and ate his lung by mistake, a media report said. Nicolas Cocaign, 39, appeared in court in the northern city of Rouen for allegedly killing Thierry Baudry in January 2007 by punching and kicking him, stabbing him with a pair of scissors and suffocating him with a rubbish bag.
Cocaign then allegedly sliced open Baudry’s chest with a razor blade, removed a rib and pulled out an organ which he believed was the man’s heart, but which in fact was his lung, the Daily Telegraph reported. —PTI