Turkey vows revenge for PKK attack

Hundreds of Turks have held rallies in Ankara and Istanbul to denounce the killing of 24 soldiers by Kurdish militants.

The troops died when fighters from the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, mounted simultaneous attacks on seven remote army outposts on the Turkish Iraq border.

“We suffer great pain,” said one protester. “We want an end to this. We don’t want to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night with fresh news of martyrs.”

Turkey’s president visited a military base vowing revenge for the deaths while both the US and the European Union, which view the PKK as a terrorist group, condemned the attacks.

Turkey has accused Iraq of not doing enough to crack down on the Kurdish rebels who have been waging a decades-long war from inside Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

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