DIYARBAKIR - Kurdish militants have released a British tourist snatched from a passenger bus in southeastern Turkey over the weekend, and the man was in good health, Turkish security officials and the British embassy said on Monday. The man was still in the care of Turkish authorities and was being transferred to Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's southeast, the officials said. "We have spoken to him and he has been in touch with his family in the United Kingdom. He seems to be in good health," a spokesman for the British embassy in Ankara, Peter Spoor, said. Turkish security officials confirmed the man had been released on Sunday night. The Briton, said to be in his mid-thirties, was abducted on Saturday when militants formed a roadblock by setting two vehicles on fire on a road from Diyarbakir to Bingol, in the country's restive, mainly Kurdish region, Turkish officials said. The bus's final destination had been the city of Trabzon on Turkey's Black Sea coast. Security officials said they were trying to hunt down a band of up to 15 separatist fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) believed to be the abductors. The PKK has kidnapped foreigners before, mainly during the 1990s, but abductions of tourists are now rare. The group has recently focused on attacking military targets in southeastern Turkey. Kidnapping of Turkish citizens, however, has continued. Separately, two security personnel were killed when they stepped on an improvised explosive device laid by PKK militants in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province, security officials said on Monday. One of the men killed was the commander of Lice's gendarme, or military police force. The PKK, which is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the European Union, has stepped up attacks on Turkish security targets over the past year after a ceasefire between the militants and the Turkish state broke down. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the militants took up arms in 1984 as part of their fight for more Kurdish autonomy and rights.
