Araz News: Thursday,September 3 2015,One soldier was killed in an ambush staged by outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in Turkey’s southeastern province of Hakkari on Sept. 1, a day after a police officer was killed in a PKK attack in the eastern province of Batman, HDN reported.

The Turkish military reported Sept. 2 a Turkish troop was killed by the PKK in an ambush that occurred in Hakkari, a southeastern Anatolian town bordering Iraq and Iran.

The incident took place at 7:05 a.m. local time in the Şemdinli district of Hakkari, as a group of PKK militants opened fire on a military unit conducting an operation to provide road safety between the Şemdinli and Tekeli districts.

A troop was killed, the army said in its statement, while two others were lightly wounded. Two F-16s were immediately sent to the region as part of a comprehensive military mobilization towards the region to defeat the terrorists, it read.

As a result of the aerial campaign of the F-16s, 20 terrorists were killed, the semi-official Anadolu Agency reported, citing “reliable security sources.”

Clashes between the Turkish Army and the PKK have intensified since mid-July after the cease fire between the two was broken.

Meanwhile, one deputy police commissioner, 37-year-old Burhan Gatfar, succumbed to his injuries in hospital after being attacked by PKK members while inside a car in Batman on Sept. 1.

Militants had opened fired with long-barreled rifles around 3:45 p.m. while the police officers were driving down a road to the historic village of Hasankeyf, killing Gatfar and injuring a fellow police officer.

Gatfar, who was the father for two, and whose wife was also a police officer in the same province, was laid to rest in his hometown of Elazığ, an eastern province, after an official ceremony was held at the Batman Provincial Police Department.