Turkey’s foreign ministry has said the three German climbers kidnapped more than a week ago by Kurdish rebels have been released and are in good healh.
The mountaineers will be handed over to German police after questioning by Turkish military officials, said the governor of Agri Province, near the border with Iran, where the mountaineers had been kidnapped on July 8th.
Gendarme forces had taken the mountaineers from a hilltop where they had been left by PKK militants.
"Because of our heavy operations in the region, the PKK was forced to leave them on a hilltop and flee," said Agri governor Mehmet Cetin. "The aim of our operations has been to prevent the terrorists from taking the hostages across the border."
The three mountaineers had established a camp on Mount Ararat in Agri province as part of a 13-member climbing team earlier this month when they were seized by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels.
The PKK said they took the Germans hostage as a move against what they called the Berlin's recent hostile actions against the Kurdish separatists.
Last month Germany banned Kurdish television station Roj TV, which Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble described as being a mouthpiece for the PKK, and Berlin extradited two PKK militants to Turkey last year.
Kidnapping tourists is a rare tactic for the outlawed separatist PKK whose activities are mainly focused on attacking military targets in southeast Turkey with the aim of carving out an ethnic homeland in the mostly Kurdish region.
Ankara considers the PKK a terrorist organisation, as does the European Union and the United States.