Kurdish militant bomb attacks on Turkish army outpost kill six

Diyarbakir: Two bomb attacks by Kurdish militants ripped through a military outpost and an army vehicle in southeast Turkey on Sunday, killing six members of the armed forces, the military said, showing no let-up in a conflict which flared a year ago.

It was the third such attack in the last 24 hours in the mainly Kurdish region, where a two-year-old ceasefire between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and the state collapsed last July.

Since then, thousands of PKK fighters, security force members and civilians have died in fighting across the region.

In the latest violence, a roadside bomb planted by PKK guerrillas ripped through a military vehicle and killed four soldiers on the road between Semdinli and Aktutun in Hakkari province, along the border with Iraq, an army statement said.

It said one soldier was also wounded in the attack, which occurred at 12:05 pm (0905 GMT). Security sources said army border units were put on alert and an air-backed operation was launched to find those responsible.

The attacks cone after reports that senior PKK commander Fehman Huseyin was killed on Friday in a bomb attack on a car in which he was travelling in northeast Syria. The report by Turkey`s state-run Anadolu Agency has not been confirmed. 

Elsewhere in southeast Turkey, PKK militants carried out a car bomb attack on a military outpost in the Ercis district of Van province overnight, killing one soldier and a member of the state-sponsored village guard militia, the army said.

It said ten soldiers and five village guards were wounded.

Further west, along the border with Syria, PKK guerrillas staged a car bomb attack around midday on Saturday targeting a military installation in Mardin province, killing two soldiers and a civilian and wounding dozens, security sources said.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, began its insurgency in 1984.