PKK releases kidnapped German climbers

20/07/2008

ANKARA, Turkey -- Three Germans, kidnapped by members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) last week, were freed on Sunday (July 20th). Foreign Minister Ali Babacan called his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to inform him of the release. The Kurdish militants abducted the climbers on July 8th as a reprisal for Berlin's recent actions against PKK associations and supporters in Germany.

In other news, militants of the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Saturday shot and killed four people and wounded nine others in an attack on a village in the southeastern province of Bingol, Turkish media reported. The probable motive was a blood feud between villages, Bingol Governor Irfan Balkanlioglu said. Ten other PKK members died in gun battles with the security forces in northeastern Turkey on Friday, six of them in Siirt province. (AFP, Reuters, Hurriyet - 20/07/08, Zaman, Hurryiet, Dogan news agency, AFP, Reuters - 19/07/08)