PKK terrorist 'confesses to being trained by PYD'

SANLIURFA, Turkey

A PKK terrorist has confessed to martyring two Turkish police officers and being trained in Syria, a police source said Tuesday.

The unnamed source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media, said the suspect - Erdal D. - had made a statement in which he confessed to the killings of Tanju Sakarya, 26, and Fatih Kilbey, 40, on Aug. 28 last year.

He also said he had received three months’ “assassination training” in al-Qamishli, a town on the Syria-Turkey border in Syria’s al-Hasakah province, the source said. The province is controlled by the PYD, a Syrian Kurdish group affiliated to the PKK and considered a terrorist organization by Turkey.

Sakarya and Kilbey were gunned down in front of Balikligol State Hospital in Sanliurfa, southeast Turkey, and later died in hospital.

Erdal D. was arrested alongside four other suspects in Suruc on Sep. 23 following a manhunt.

The source said Erdal D. had fought with the PYD in Kobani, which lies just across the border from Suruc, for two months and later travelled to Turkey to carry out a bomb attack on a police headquarters in Suruc with an explosives-laden vehicle prepared by the PYD in Kobani.

Kobani witnessed heavy fighting between Daesh and the PYD in late 2014 and early 2015.

The PKK - listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and EU - resumed its 30-year armed campaign last July. Since then, more than 260 members of the security forces have been martyred and thousands of PKK terrorists killed, according to officials.