Kurdish activists killed in Paris

A co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and two other female activists were found shot dead on Thursday in Paris, a day after it emerged that Turkey and the jailed leader of the banned group were holding peace talks.The women were found in the early hours with gunshot wounds to the head and neck inside a Kurdish information centre in the 10th district of the French capital, police and the centre's director said.Interior Minister Manuel Valls described the killings as "assassinations" after visiting the scene of the crime. "Three women have been shot down, killed, without doubt executed. This is a very serious incident, which is why I am here. It is completely unacceptable," he told reporters. One of the dead was Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the PKK, the Federation of Kurdish Associations in France said in a statement.A US embassy report from April 2007 revealed on the Wikileaks website said that "US and Turkish officials had identified Cansiz as a priority PKK leader to bring to justice." She was arrested in Berlin the same year but released after the German courts refused to extradite her to Turkey. The second slain woman in Paris was said to be 32-year-old Fidan Dogan, an employee of the centre, who was also the Paris representative of the Brussels-based Kurdistan National Congress. The third was Leyla Soylemez, described by the federation as a "young activist". The three were last seen alive midday on Wednesday at the centre on the first floor of a building on Rue Lafayette, according to the centre's director, Leon Edart. Friends and colleagues who tried and failed to contact them eventually went to the centre and found traces of blood on the door, which they then forced open to find the three bodies inside around 01:00 am Thursday, said Edart. Two of the women were shot in the neck while the third had wounds to her forehead and stomach, the Kurdish federation said. French anti-terror police have opened a probe into the murders, officials said. There are around 150,000 Kurds in France, the vast majority of them of Turkish origin. Experts on the Kurdish movement in France said the killings could be the result of internal feuding in the PKK, personal score-settling,the work of Turkish agents or even of Turkish far-right extremists. Hundreds of Kurds gathered Thursday in front of the centre to protest at the deaths, with some chanting "We are all PKK!" and "Turkey assassin, Hollande complicit", referring to French President Francois Hollande. The murders came after Turkish media reported Wednesday that the Turkish government and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan had agreed on a roadmap to end a three-decade-old insurgency that has claimed around 45,000 lives. The PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and by much of the international community, has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy or independence in southeastern Turkey since 1984. Source: AFP/Deutsche Welle