As many as 214 Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorists have been neutralized across two provinces in the Southeast during the ongoing retaliatory campaign, the General Staff said on Tuesday on its official site.
The sweeping campaign has continued unabated since December 15.
Since the middle of this month, 172 PKK terrorists were killed in Şırnak city's Cizre and Silopi towns; 17 were neutralized in Cizre and the remaining majority were killed in restive Silopi. Security forces have also killed 42 PKK members in Diyarbakır's Sur town.
The military and police have teamed up to clean the restive areas of terrorists.
The Army also announced that three PKK members were neutralized each in the towns of Cizre, Silopi and Sur on Monday.
Meanwhile, the reports said that a 5-year-old boy was shot dead in Cizre when PKK terrorists opened fire on the security forces during the operations.When he was gunned down, he was playing the garden of his home. A post-mortem operation showed that a Kalashnikov bullet had hit the boy, identified as Huseyin Selcuk.
The General Staff also stated 13 hand-made improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been detonated in Silopi where the military also removed three terrorist barricades which had been erected to prevent access into remote areas. Four PKK barricades were taken away and IEDs detonated during the operations continued under curfew.
Separately, a soldier was wounded in Şırnak when PKK terrorists opened fire on him while he was withdrawing money from an ATM machine in central Dicle. The injured soldier was taken to a Şırnak hospital after the incident.
A curfew was imposed in Cizre and Silopi on December 14. Most of the local residents relocated to safer areas after or before the curfew was imposed on the two restive towns which have frequently been the scene of clashes between security forces and PKK.
The PKK – considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU – resumed its armed campaign in late July. Since then, more than 200 members of the security forces have been martyred and over 1,700 PKK terrorists killed.
