Turkey's Kurds angry after blast

By Selcuk Gokoluk

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Clearing debris from a bombing, residents of the largest city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast say they are weary of the violence blighting their region and that more democracy and economic growth are the only answers.

"Someone must say stop to this war. Such things should never happen again. We only want to live in peace," said Mahmut Koyuncu, a 21-year-old student who was wounded and lost classmates in the bomb attack last week in central Diyarbakir.

Southeast Turkey, one of the poorest regions in the European Union candidate country, bristles with soldiers and security personnel locked in a decades-long struggle with separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels that has claimed nearly 40,000 lives.

Six people, mostly students, were killed and more than 100 wounded in the latest bombing, an attack security sources say targeted military personnel.

The PKK said some of its members, working independently, may have been to blame. On Tuesday, police detained a suspect who Turkish media said had received training in PKK camps in northern Iraq.

Many shops were still boarded up on Tuesday and there were few customers around.

"I thought the day of judgment had come. Someone fell on me. I hid under a table, then jumped out of the window," Koyuncu said.

Turkey's military has been waging an aerial bombing campaign against PKK targets in northern Iraq over the past month, helped by intelligence provided by U.S. occupying forces. But eradicating the PKK remains an elusive goal.