After the attack, which was attributed to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the PKK made a statement saying it had not been involved in the assault. In response to the special prosecutor’s request, one noncommissioned officer and 10 soldiers were questioned last Thursday. Reports said that during the eight-hour interrogation, the soldiers said they were returning from a field search and were attacked in a woody area 1.5 kilometers from the Abalı outpost and 50 meters from the Bingöl-Diyarbakır outpost. They also said there were four rifle barrels directed at them.The Sabah daily gave details of the soldiers’ accounts: “It was about 8:30 p.m. It was dark. We saw that we were being fired upon from four rifle barrels. Our lieutenant was killed in the first round of fire and one soldier next to him avoided a bullet to his head as he was wearing a helmet. We responded with our machine guns, rockets and rifles. They were targeting us one by one, but we were sweeping the area. The terrorists escaped into the forest area, and it was dark, so we were not involved in a hot pursuit. But we saw that there were four people. The clash lasted about 15 minutes.”
Investigators who searched the area found 213 shells belonging to the 20-soldier team. They were unable to find the gun that had fired the shell that killed Lt. Altunoğlu. The prosecutor’s office sent a sample of the shell to a crime lab.
The Taraf daily has accused the military of inaction despite prior warnings about the attack. It recalled that columnists in the Star and Bugün dailies had written in columns published on April 26 stating that a subversive plan was being staged to overshadow talks on the government’s constitutional amendment package amid a contentious vote in Parliament.
