LE PARISIEN, EUROPE 1, FRANCE INFO (France)
PARIS - Three Kurdish women activists, including a founding member of the militant group PKK, have been found dead inside a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, each with gunshot wounds.
The bodies of the women were found early on Thursday inside the information center of the Kurdish Institute of Paris in the French capital's central 10th arrondissement, according to France’s radio station Europe 1.
One of the victims is Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, commonly known as PKK, which has long fought for greater Kurdish autonomy and is considered a terrorist organization by the Turkish government.
The other women have been identified as Fidan DoÄŸan, a representative of the Kurdish National Congress in Paris who worked in the information center, and Leyla Söylemez, a young activist, France’s daily Le Parisien reveals.
Firat, a news agency close to the PKK, said two of those killed were shot in the head and one in the stomach, and that the murder weapon was believed to have been fitted with a silencer.
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls called the killings "intolerable" during an interview on France Info news radio, adding that an investigation was underway. Later in the morning, members of the Kurdish community started demonstrating outside the information center as Valls arrived to visit the scene of the shootings.
