Four workers were killed and four others wounded in an armed attack staged by the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in eastern Turkey on Thursday, said Bingol Governor Vehbi Avuc.

Avuc said in a statement that a group of the PKK militants attacked the workers who were cutting trees in forest between villages of Cicekdere and Kartal in Bingol province, leaving four workers dead and four others wounded,

The wounded are in serious conditions, said Avuc, adding that Turkish security forces started a large-scale operation in pursuit of the PKK members who escaped from the incident.

On May 22, a suicide bomb blast ripped through a crowded shopping center in the Ulus district of Turkish capital Ankara, killing seven, including the bomber, and injuring about 100 others. Officials believed the PKK was behind the attack.

PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

The intensity of the fighting eased after PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured and imprisoned in 1999, but flared up again in recent years.

Source: Xinhua