MESOP FLASH : PKK rebels kill Kurdish village guard & Member of Huda-Par Party

29.5.2014 – DIYARBAKIR-AMED, Turkey’s Kurdish region,— Kurdish guerrillas shot dead a state-sponsored militia member in Turkish Kurdistan in southeast of the coutry, the Turkish armed forces said on Thursday, escalating tensions in the region after days of protests at the building of new military outposts.

Two fighters from the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed “village guard” Mehmet Ugurtay in his van on Wednesday in a primary school courtyard in the Kurdish southeastern province of Mardin, where he was due to pick up pupils, the army’s general staff said.

“He was killed with one shot from a pistol. The separatist terrorist group members then fled the scene of the incident on motorbike,” the general staff said in a statement.

 Some Turkish media said the village guard was a member of the Islamist Huda-Par political party, fierce rivals of the PKK. Security sources said armed PKK militants have also abducted Huda-Par’s local representative in the Dicle district of neighbouring Diyarbakir province, Ercan Alpaslan, after setting up a roadblock and pulling him from his minibus on Wednesday evening. A day earlier, rebels abducted a soldier during a protest that has forced the closure of highways across Diyarbakir. Security forces are continuing operations to find both men.

The militants have blocked various points along country roads with trucks and cars seized over the past five days in protest at the construction of several new military outposts, used by the armed forces to maintain regional security.