Kurdish separatist fighters in Iraq begin laying down weapons

Sulaymaniyah: Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey began laying down their weapons in a symbolic ceremony on Friday in northern Iraq, the first concrete step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced in May that it would disband and renounce armed conflict, ending four decades of hostilities. The move came after PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned on an island near Istanbul since 1999, urged his group in February to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm.

Öcalan renewed his call in a video message broadcast Wednesday, saying, “I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons.”

Most journalists were not allowed at the site of Friday’s ceremony.

The PKK issued a statement from the fighters laying down their weapons, who called themselves the “Peace and Democratic Society Group,” saying that they had disarmed “as a gesture of goodwill and a commitment to the practical success” of the peace process.