Kurdish Rebels Kill 6 in Turkey

Kurdish guerrillas set off bombs Saturday in eastern Turkey, derailing two trains and killing six guards, officials said. The second train was bombed as it rushed to help the first.

Six railway guards were killed in the first attack when the bomb exploded under their car, officials said. The blast sent seven cars off the tracks in the province of Bingol, about 400 miles southeast of the capital, Ankara, injuring 12 passengers and crew members, some of whom were trapped under the train cars.

The militants derailed the second train with a similar remote-controlled bomb. Authorities provided no information about how many people were on the second train or whether there were any casualties.

A third bomb, not far from the site of the first attack, was found and detonated by Turkish troops, who launched an operation to hunt down the rebels in the rugged area.

In another bombing, suspected rebels injured three Turkish police officers in the southeastern town of Kulp, police said. The bomb went off as the police approached to check a suspicious package left in the street.

Turkish officials say Kurdish insurgents seeking autonomy have increasingly used remote-controlled bombs in stepped-up attacks since the start of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The rebels ended a five-year unilateral cease-fire last year in the mostly Kurdish southeast, saying Turkey had not responded in kind. The fighting has left 37,000 people dead since 1984.

Syria, which also has a sizable Kurdish minority and has been accused by Ankara’s government of harboring Kurdish rebels from Turkey, denounced the bombings as “terrorist actions.”