Turkey ends military operations against PKK

Turkish army has announced an end of operations against the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey and troops are returning to garrisons, Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reported on its website Monday.

On Thursday, Turkish military launched a land operation backed by air forces within Turkey and in the north of Iraq after Wednesday's PKK attacks that killed 24 soldiers and wounded 18 others in the southeastern province of Hakkari. Turkish security forces killed 49 members of the PKK in southeastern Turkey in the last two days, a military statement said Sunday.

Some 35 bodies of PKK militants were found in the Kazan valley in Cukurca town of the southeastern province of Hakkari after Turkish forces launched artillery raids, followed by airstrike against PKK rebels, while corpses of another 14 PKK members were discovered in a valley nearby, seven of them in a cave, said a statement posted on the website of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces.

PKK members attacked several military and police buildings and killed 24 Turkish security troops in several locations in the predominately Kurdish province of Hakkari near the Iraqi border, a day after they killed five police officers and three civilians in the province of Bitlis in southeastern Turkey.

Listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK took up arms in 1984 to create an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey. More than 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts involving the PKK during the past over two decades.