Turkey beefs up border with 30,000 extra troops
Turkey has deployed more than 30,000 additional troops in its predominantly Kurdish south-east and along its rugged border with Iraq and Iran to fight Kurdish guerrillas and stop them from infiltrating across the Iraqi border. Kurdish rebels yesterday killed two Turkish soldiers and injured a third in a grenade attack on a military outpost, the Anatolia news agency reported, raising the number of Turkish troops killed this year to at least 17. More than 40 Kurdish guerrillas have also been killed in the same period in a series of clashes. The Turkish deployment, which has been going on for several weeks, boosts an already large garrison in the region that by some estimates tops 250,000 soldiers.