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Diyarbakir: A three-year-old boy was shot in the throat and killed yesterday as Kurdish pro-testers clashed with security forces in Turkey, a hospital said, raising the death toll to seven last week. The child was on the terrace of his home in Batman, southeast Turkey, when he was hit by a stray bullet, apparently shot by a policeman firing into the air to disperse about 200 protesters, a hospital official said. The boy was killed immediately. Six people have been killed so far in days of clashes between Kurdish protesters and police in Diyarbakir, the main town of Turkey's troubled southeast, its mayor said yesterday. An eight-year-old child died overnight in hospital. A man and a child were shot dead on Wednesday and a second man was crushed under a police armoured car. It was not immediately clear when or how the other two people died.
"Seven people have died, 200 people are wounded," Mayor Osman Baydemir told a news conference amid the worst social unrest in the impoverished region in decades. Daily running battles between thousands of stone-throwing youths and riot police armed with teargas and guns have turned Diyarbakir, a city of nearly one million people into a battle zone. The clashes first erupted on Tuesday after funeral ceremonies for 14 members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed by troops last weekend. Many shops, banks and other buildings have been badly damaged. Cars and trucks have been torched in the ongoing violence.
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