Another Turkey hunger striker dies

A hunger striker who died earlier this year is helped by a neighbour

ANKARA, Turkey -- A hunger striker has starved to death, the 36th to die in protests by left wing militants opposed to Turkey's new high-security prisons.

Elsewhere in the country three Kurdish separatists were killed in clashes with security forces, including one who blew himself up.

Faster Abdulbari Yusufoglu, 21, died before dawn on Thursday in a house in an Istanbul suburb where some 10 other left-wing militants are also on hunger strike, the prisoner support group Ozgur Tayad told The Associated Press news agency.

Yusufoglu was a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, a banned Marxist group. He had fasted for 137 days, Ozgur Tayad said.

Some 200 prisoners and their supporters began their hunger strikes last year after jail authorities transferred inmates from large, dormitory-style wards to "F-type" prisons with one- or three-person cells.

Violence broke out in December after security forces transferred inmates to the new prisons. Thirty inmates and two soldiers were killed in the clashes.

Since then 35 hunger strikers have starved to death, while another died on Wednesday after setting himself on fire in support of the hunger strikers. The hunger strikers take sugared water and vitamins to prolong their fasts.

Prisoners say the new jails leave them isolated and vulnerable to beatings from guards.

Earlier in the week, the DHKP-C claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack close to Istanbul's main square which killed the bomber, two policemen and an Australian woman. The attack also injured 20 others.

DHKP-C said it carried out the attack in support of the prisoners.

Meanwhile in Eastern Turkey soldiers shot and killed two Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters on Wednesday in the mountains of Tunceli province, a military official told Reuters news agency.

He added that a third rebel had detonated a hand grenade and killed himself.

"The operation in the province is continuing," the official said. He said some 2,000 security officers were pursuing about 100 PKK fighters and the military was using helicopter gunships.

Soldiers killed three other PKK members in Tunceli on Tuesday.

Intermittent fighting has flared since PKK commander Abdullah Ocalan, sentenced to death for treason in 1999, ordered his followers to withdraw from Turkey.

The army says that says some 500 Kurdish rebels remain in the country, while 5,000 are encamped in bases in Iraq and Iran.