Diyarbakir

Heavy storms, landslides, flash floods and lightning have killed at least 23 people in Europe and Turkey, officials said on Monday. Nine people died in eastern Turkey, including six killed in severe flooding in mountainous Agri province near the Iranian border, where river waters were swollen by melting snows. Two more people were missing.

Police raided houses on Wednesday in a major security crackdown in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east, after a bomb blast killed 10 people, five of them children. It was the bloodiest attack in Turkey since suicide bombers killed more than 60 people in Istanbul in November 2003.

A seven-year old boy shot in the chest during a third day of sustained rioting by Kurds in eastern Turkey died overnight. The child was fatally wounded on Thursday when about 10 000 angry protesters took to the streets of Diyarbakir, Turkey’s largest Kurdish-majority city, for the funerals of three people killed during the earlier clashes with police.