Kurdish Rebels Strike Again in Turkey : Uprising: Attack comes despite army’s search for three kidnaped Americans. Guerrillas warn foreigners.

Defying a Turkish army search for three kidnaped American hunters for Noah’s lost biblical ark, Kurdish guerrillas struck in eastern Turkey again Sunday as their leader warned foreigners they could be in danger in “Kurdistan.”

U.S. Embassy spokesman Larry Taylor named the three missing Americans as Marvin T. Wilson, Richard M. Rives and Ronald Eldon Wyatt. Wyatt, based in Nashville, Tenn., is a longtime searcher for Noah’s Ark.

The three middle-aged Americans were among five foreigners abducted from at least two buses stopped at a guerrilla checkpoint late Friday in the eastern Turkish province of Bingol.

American citizens were told to defer all but essential travel to southeast Turkey. In that region are a U.S. radar base at Pirinclik near Diyarbakir and hundreds of troops at Silopi as part of a multinational force near the Iraqi border.

In a complex twist of Kurdish politics, U.S. troops are stationed in Silopi to protect the Kurds of Iraq against any attack from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein while radical Kurds in Turkey have probably abducted the Americans.

“We have sent our consular officer to the scene, but contrary to reports, no American forces based in Turkey are taking part in the search,” Taylor said.

Turkish troops and helicopters Sunday combed the stark mountain region where the abduction took place, the second kidnaping of foreigners in eastern Turkey in a month.

The guerrillas were still bold enough to cut the main Istanbul-Van highway in Bingol province and search an intercity bus and burn it, the Anatolian news agency said. Two rebels were killed in a subsequent clash with the army, it added.

The fourth missing foreigner is a Briton, Gareth Thomas, apparently a lone tourist. The fifth is Allen Roberts, an Australian archeologist traveling with the three Americans, according to Donald Witheford, Australia’s ambassador to Turkey. Diplomats say that no claim or demands have yet been made. Witheford said “nobody knows who took them, but the first assumption is that it is the PKK.”

PKK is the acronym for the Kurdish Workers’ Party, the increasingly powerful separatist guerrillas based among Turkey’s 12-million-strong Kurdish minority. The PKK launched a campaign for an independent Kurdistan in 1984.

PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, speaking before the latest kidnaping but after that of 10 German tourists earlier in August, told two Turkish weeklies published Sunday that foreigners were now part of the conflict.

“From now on, tourists coming to Kurdistan will be putting their lives in danger. They must ask permission from our organization. If they don’t, they may be called to account. We have offices abroad. A little paper is enough,” Ocalan said.

Turkey, which pursues a relentless policy of assimilation toward its Kurdish minority, does not recognize Kurdistan as the name of the 13 Kurdish provinces of southeast Turkey. Iran and Iraq, where most of the rest of the world’s 25 million Kurds live, do have provinces named Kurdistan.

There was some confusion among diplomats in Turkey about whether the Americans and the Australian were working together or whether the expedition was sponsored by an Australian foundation or by a Nashville group.