Kurd rebel conducted suicide bombing in SE Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, March 13 (Reuters) - The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said one of its members had carried out a suicide bombing in southeast Turkey last week in which two other people were also killed.

"It has been determined that the action in Van on March 9 was undertaken by Devrim Solduk, codenamed Dengtav, on his own initiative and decision," the group said in a statement late on Sunday, adding that the explosion had been an "accident".

"In a letter our friend left, he said he would carry out such an action because the Turkish state launched a destructive process against our leader Apo," it said.

Apo is the codename of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader captured by Turkish security forces in 1999 and sentenced to life imprisonment on an island near Istanbul.

Ocalan is reviled in much of Turkey as the man responsible for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the PKK launched its armed struggle in 1984 for a Kurdish state in southeast Turkey.

There is much less violence in the southeast now than at the height of the conflict in the 1980s and 1990s. But a series of bomb blasts in the region in recent months has stirred fears the conflict could be rekindled.

As well as the deaths, 19 people were injured in the March 9 blast, which occurred near the Van governor's office. Officials said at the time they believed it was a suicide bomb.

The PKK statement said Solduk was born in 1977 in the southeastern town of Siverek and had studied at Istanbul's Yildiz Technical University before joining the rebels.