Several killed in Turkish clashes

By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Istanbul

Three people were killed in rioting in Yuksekova on Tuesday

One person is said to have been killed in continuing clashes between riot police and protesters in south-east Turkey, after three died on Tuesday.

The unrest began as a tense stand-off and soon descended into violence.

All day, police in the city of Hakkari have been using teargas and water cannons, and firing into the air to break up crowds of Kurdish protestors.

A city hospital official told the BBC one person had died in the unrest. One source says it was a teenage boy.

Several other people have been seriously injured.

Promise of justice

The angry protests were sparked by a bomb at a bookstore in nearby Semdinli last week.

Three Turkish security officials have been charged in connection with the attack, thought to have been targeted at a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK.

Since then the violence has rotated between towns in this mostly Kurdish area, close to the border with Iraq.

With little sign of any let-up in the unrest, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan chaired a four-hour meeting of security officials in Ankara.

In a statement afterwards, he repeated his promise that all those responsible for the original bombing would be revealed and brought to justice.

But the clashes in Hakkari are still going on and in nearby Yuksekova - where the three people died on Tuesday - tensions remain high.