WordBulletin

World Bulletin / News Desk

French police said Friday autopsies of three Kurdish women who were shot dead in Paris on Thursday in what appeared to be an "execution" could take a week.

A police source with the anti-terrorism teams investigating the slayings at the Kurdish Information Center in eastern Paris said there were no witnesses to the killing of the three women, one of whom was identified as Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of organization of PKK.

A spokesperson for a Paris prosecutor has said the three victims were all shot multiple times in the head.

The other two women were identified as Fidan Dogan and Leyla Soylemez.

The murders coincided with ongoing talks between Turkish intelligence officials and the group's jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in a bid to disarm the PKK.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the murders might be the result of an "internal feud" and or it might be an attempt to derail the Turkish government's "good intentioned efforts" to end the conflict between Turkish troops and the PKK, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.

There are several factions in the PKK and intra-organization executions are common within the group.

Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader, serves a life-time term at a prison on Imrali island off Istanbul.