Suspected militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) abducted two Turkish soldiers in eastern Turkey amid a flare-up of violence between Kurdish rebels and security forces, the army said Saturday. The militants seized the soldiers late Friday after stopping a passenger bus on a highway between the Tunceli and Erzincan provinces, the army's high command said in a statement on its website.
An operation was under way to find the soldiers, who were off-duty when they were kidnapped, it added. Abductions by the PKK are relatively common and usually end peacefully. There were no further details about the situation of the soldiers, but the Hurriyet newspaper said on its website that the two conscripts were taken by the rebels into the nearby mountains of the Pulumur region. The Turkish government has been waging a relentless offensive against strongholds of the PKK in the southeast of the country and in neighbouring northern Iraq.