By AFP
HUNDREDS of Kurds have staged a violent protest in south-eastern Turkey after police said two Kurdish rebels had been killed after a raid on their hideout. The protesters demonstrated near where the two alleged members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) died earlier in the centre of Diyarbakir, the main city of the majority Kurdish region. Many claimed that the incident was another blunder by the authorities, after the killing in an air strike on the Iraqi border of 35 Kurds who turned out to be civilian smugglers and not rebel fighters as the military claimed. Take Control of Your Super Special Offer Ends Soon. Apply Now! Turkish police arrest a Kurdish man during a demonsration in the main Kurdish city Diyarbakir. Turkish police arrest a Kurdish man during a demonstration in the main Kurdish city Diyarbakir. Photo: AFP HUNDREDS of Kurds have staged a violent protest in south-eastern Turkey after police said two Kurdish rebels had been killed after a raid on their hideout. The protesters demonstrated near where the two alleged members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) died earlier in the centre of Diyarbakir, the main city of the majority Kurdish region. Many claimed that the incident was another blunder by the authorities, after the killing in an air strike on the Iraqi border of 35 Kurds who turned out to be civilian smugglers and not rebel fighters as the military claimed. ''They were university students and they did not own any guns,'' said an 18-year-old protester, contradicting local police who said the pair were rebels and two rifles and three hand grenades had been seized. Protesters chanted slogans and threw stones at police, who responded with water cannon and tear-gas and made several arrests, as clashes between police and small groups of youngsters spread to side streets. An AFP reporter at the scene was warned by police not to talk to the demonstrators. Burhan Marangoz, 52, whose son was among 10 people killed in a bombing in Diyarbakir in 2006, called for an end to the violence. ''I want (Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan to tell me why we go through all this,'' he said. Tensions are running high in the region after Wednesday's air strike, which prompted the PKK to issue a call for an ''uprising''. Mr Erdogan admitted on Friday that the victims were smugglers and not separatist rebels as the army had originally claimed. The PKK, which took up arms in Kurdish-majority southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives, is labelled a terrorist organisation by Ankara and much of the international community.