Turkey ends two-month anti-PKK military operation in south-eastern Kurdish town

Turkish forces have completed a two-month military offensive against Kurdish militants in a border town after weeks of fighting, Interior Minister Efkan Ala says, raising hopes a lockdown could be lifted.
Authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on Cizre, near Turkey's frontiers with both Iraq and Syria, on December 14 in a bid to root out armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants who had dug trenches and erected barricades.
"The operations in Cizre were completed in a very successful fashion," Mr Ala said in comments broadcast on local media, without going into further detail.
"The curfew will continue for a while longer. There are traps and mines in certain areas that could harm people. Closing the ditches and removing barricades will take a bit of time."
Fighting there has killed at least 79 civilians, according to the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the biggest party in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.
Another 66 bodies are now at a morgue or trapped in a basement but have yet to be identified, the HDP said.
The PKK have traditionally concentrated on rural areas in their battle for greater autonomy, but moved it to urban centres like Cizre last year, raising the civilian death toll.
Six PKK fighters were killed in Cizre on Wednesday, while 12 corpses of militants who were killed earlier were recovered, the military said.
At least 129 civilians have perished in Sur, Cizre and the nearby town of Silopi since December, the HDP said.
Dozens of militants and police and soldiers have also been killed.
A ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July, wrecking a two-and-a-half-year peace process that had been widely seen as Turkey's best chance of ending three decades of strife in the restive southeast.
About 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, have died since the PKK took up arms in 1984.

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