Alwaght - Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkey’s Hizbullah, Kurdish Islamists, have engaged in fresh street battles in Turkey's southeastern town of Cizre, near Turkey's border with Syria. At least three people died in these clashes that occurred two months after the clashes in which more than 36 people died, Hurriyet Daily News reported .
According to Reuters, the two groups are historically fierce rivals. Huda-Par draws support from sympathizers of Turkey's Hizbullah militant group which fought the PKK in the 1990s.
Tensions were still high in the town bordering Syria after the clashes, which the Turkish police had difficulty in containing, the security sources said.
Members of the Free Cause Party (Hüda Par), an affiliate of Hizbullah, confronted the YDG-H, the youth branch of the PKK, at 03.00 a.m. on Dec. 27 in the southeastern province of Şırnak's Cizre district, according to the Doğan News Agency. The confrontation turned into gunfights in several neighborhoods early in the morning, Hurriyet Daily News reported .
While increasingly larger crowds used long barrel guns against each other, particularly in the Nur neighborhood, security forces and armoured vehicles failed to enter the hotspots due to the ditches dug by the members of the YDG-H .
Homes of several Hüda-Par members have been besieged by armed YDG-H members, Doğan News Agency reported .
At least three people were killed while three others were injured in the Dec. 27 clashes, the Governorate of Şırnak announced .
One corpse could be taken to the hospital by police only after hours-long gunfight halted in the evening. Meanwhile, the power outage continued in the town throughout the day .
Clashes resumed at night and one armored police vehicle patrolling near the Governorate building was torched .
Thirty six people died and more than 1,000 buildings were torched in early October after Kurds rioted in several southeastern cities over what they perceived as the government's refusal to help Syrian Kurds fighting Islamic State militants in the besieged town of Kobani across the border .
The violence, the worst seen in the region in many years, was partly driven by intense clashes between Kurds and the Islamists.