Urban killings, air strikes as bloodshed worsens in Turkish southeast

[September 11, 2015]  DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdish militants fired on a restaurant frequented by police in southeastern Turkey's main city on Friday, killing a waiter and wounding three officers, as the restive region descended further into the worst bloodshed it has seen since the 1990s.

Turkish jets bombed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq for a fifth straight night, while the leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition accused security forces of a shoot-to-kill policy in another town under a week-long curfew.

Hundreds of militants and members of the security forces have died since hostilities resumed between the PKK and the state after the collapse of a ceasefire in July, shattering a peace process launched in 2012 to end a three-decade conflict.

The government resumed air strikes against the PKK two months ago in response to what it described as a sharp escalation in attacks on the security forces and shootings in urban centers. President Tayyip Erdogan has promised the fight will go on until "not one terrorist is left".

"If this war were to last another 100 years, the PKK would still be there and the Turkish army would still be there," Selahattin Demirtas, head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said in a speech at a party meeting.

"Fingers should be taken off the trigger. The guns must fall silent to allow for conditions to resume negotiations."

More than 15 warplanes struck PKK targets in Qandil, Zap and Avashin in the mountains of northern Iraq for five hours early on Friday, one security source said.

WAITER SHOT WHILE TENDING TABLE OF POLICEMEN

In the restaurant attack in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish southeast, a waiter was shot in the head as he served bread to a table of police officers, one of whom was critically wounded, other security sources said.

The 22-year-old waiter had returned from compulsory military service two months ago, the sources said.

Further south, a round-the-clock curfew in the town of Cizre entered its eighth day. Pro-Kurdish politicians say 21 civilians have been killed and a humanitarian crisis has unfolded, with the dead going unburied and food and water running short.

Demirtas said special forces, acting on the local governor's orders, were shooting anyone venturing out on the street.

"Kurds are getting the death penalty," he said.

The interior minister said on Thursday that only one civilian had died in Cizre and that military operations there had killed dozens of militants. A group of HDP lawmakers was denied access to the town on Thursday.

Nils Muiznieks, human rights commissioner at the Council of Europe, said there were reports of a disproportionate use of force and called for immediate access for observers to Cizre, a town of around 100,000 people near the Syrian and Iraqi borders.

State authorities also imposed an overnight curfew in the town of Yuksekova near the Iranian border overnight due to what they said was increased militant activity.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Ankara, the European Union and United States, began a separatist insurgency in 1984 and 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, the majority of them Kurdish militants.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall/Mark Heinrich)

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