At least three dead as Turkey's Hizbullah, PKK clash in street battles

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Turkey's Hizbullah, whose members are mostly Kurdish Islamists, have engaged in fresh street battles in a southeastern province near Turkey's border with Syria, killing at least three, more than two months after the clashes that led to the deaths of 36 people.

Members of the Free Cause Party (Hüda Par), an affiliate of Hizbullah, confronted the YDG-H, the youth branch of the PKK, at 03.00 a.m. on Dec. 27 in the southeastern province of Şırnak's Cizre district, according to the Doğan News Agency. The confrontation turned into gunfights in several neighborhoods early in the morning.

While increasingly larger crowds used long barrel guns against each other, particularly in the Nur neighborhood, security forces and armoured vehicles failed to enter the hotspots due to the ditches dug by the members of the YDG-H.

Homes of several Hüda-Par members have been besieged by armed YDG-H members, Doğan News Agency reported.

At least three people were killed while three others were injured in the Dec. 27 clashes, the Governorate of Şırnak announced.

One corpse could be taken to the hospital by police only after hours-long gunfight halted in the evening. Meanwhile, the power outage continued in the town throughout the day.

Clashes resumed at night and one armored police vehicle patrolling near the Governorate building was torched.

Hüda Par and the YDG-H had engaged in several clashes during the Oct. 7 protests across Turkey against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that had mounted an assault on Kobane, a Syrian Kurdish town near the Turkish border.

36 people had been killed and over 300 people were injured during the violent protests,...