JINHA

AGIRÎ - A Turkish police special operations team has killed three people working in a bakery in Ağrı province. Two of the dead are children.

16-year-old Orhan Aslan, 15-year-old Emrah Aydemir and an unknown person were slain last night by a police team in the Diyadin district of the largely Kurdish Ağrı province. The three were at work in the wood yard of a bakery when they were slain. Police then dressed them in guerrilla clothes and took their pictures, according to a statement by Fevzi Kahraman, who lives in the apartment above the wood yard.

"These are children. They were working at the bakery," said Fevzi. The police then tried to arrest the man. Aytekin, Mehmet and Harun Kahraman, all from Fevzi's family, tried to stop the arrest and were then arrested.

The governor of Ağrı province issued a statement on the events. "On August 12, 2015 at around 21:00, members of the separatist terror organization the PKK launched an attack on the Diyadin District Military Police Command using rocket launchers and long barreled weapons," wrote the governor. "As the terrorists fled after our security forces returned fire, three terrorists were captured dead with their weapons in an operation to arrest them."

Recently, on July 31, three people were executed in a home in the nearby town of Ağrı, the provincial center. On that occasion, the governor had issued a nearly identical press statement. Again, on April 11, when a civilian was killed by police forces during a military operation on the nearby Mt. Tendürek, the Ağrı governor had issued a similar statement.

(at-mt/fk/cm)