World Bulletin / News Desk

Turkish Interior Minister said he expected PKK to free kidnapped public officials on Tuesday.

Minister Muammer Güler said, "three-member delegation will take the hostages tomorrow. We informed the families on the situation."

The delegation includes three deputies from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), the president of the Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed Peoples (MAZLUM-DER) and the head of the BDP's Diyarbakır provincial branch.

Turkish officials began talks last October with Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned on an island near Istanbul, with the aim of ending a conflict in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.

As part of confidence-building steps, the PKK had been expected to release around a dozen Turks - most of them junior soldiers and police officials - whom it is holding at its bases in the mountains of northern Iraq.