World Scene

TURKEY

Military attacks rebel Kurds in Iraq

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s military said yesterday it launched overnight air and artillery attacks against Kurdish separatist rebels in northern Iraq after an insurgent strike on a military base.

The raids in northern Iraq targeted members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who had escaped into Iraq from Turkey after attacking a police station Friday night with a force of between 150 and 200 rebels.

Two soldiers were killed in the initial PKK attack and four died later in ensuing clashes with the separatists.

The violence is part of a wider military operation, backed by attack helicopters, tanks and artillery, against the PKK in restive and mountainous southeast Turkey.

Sporadic fighting occurred yesterday along the Iraqi border of Hakkari province, military sources told Reuters news agency, adding that 20,000 troops had been deployed along the Turkish-Iraqi border with large convoys delivering arms and supplies.

Nearly 100,000 troops have been stationed in the country’s southeast to fight against the PKK.

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban prisoners on hunger strike

KABUL — About 300 Taliban suspects have been on a hunger strike in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar prison for a week demanding fair trials, rights groups and local lawmakers said yesterday.

The prisoners, most of them captured in connection with a Taliban-led insurgency, stopped eating a week ago yesterday in protest at the handling of their trials by local authorities, one lawmaker said.

“About 300 prisoners have been on a hunger strike [for] the past one week. About 20 of them have sewn their lips,” said Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council.

It was not independently confirmed they had sewn their lips.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar confirmed the hunger strike and called on authorities to deal with the issue.

IRAN

Talks with IAEA to start again

TEHRAN — Iran and the U.N. nuclear agency watchdog will resume talks on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program in the Iranian capital today, an Iranian official was quoted as saying yesterday.

The head of the Iranian delegation, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, did not give details, but the two sides held two rounds of discussions in Tehran last month on intelligence allegations the Islamic republic researched construction of nuclear bombs.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in April that Tehran agreed on steps to clarify the intelligence reports by the end this month. Up to now, Iran has denied the information, but has not backed up its position with evidence.

The intelligence came variously from a laptop computer given to Washington by an Iranian defector in 2004, from other Western countries and the IAEA’s own inquiries.

SRI LANKA

President praises election victory

BATTICALOA — Sri Lanka’s president yesterday hailed his party’s election victory in the country’s tense Eastern Province as a mandate to push ahead with his war against Tamil Tiger rebels in the north.

“I note that the people of the east have given a clear mandate for peace through the defeat of terrorism, the strengthening of democracy and the development of the country,” President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a statement.

The opposition condemned Saturday’s balloting as irreparably flawed, saying it defied the government’s promises to restore democracy to the region after 13 years of rebel rule. The military ousted the rebels from the east in July and is now trying to advance into the rebels’ stronghold in the north.

From wire dispatches and staff reports