DIYARBAKIR Turkey AP An 18-year-old woman set off a hand grenade strapped to her body Tuesday in a busy shopping street killing herself and injuring nine people said the governor of this province in the heart of the 14-year-old Kurdish war for autonomy. Nafiz Kayali governor of Diyarbakir province refused to say whether the woman was a Kurdish rebel Anatolia a Turkish news agency reported. Female Kurdish militants have in the past carried out suicide bomb attacks in Turkey. The blast occurred in the town of Lice in southeastern Turkey. Private television NTV reported that one of the injured was a soldier. The attack could discredit claims by rebel Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan who was detained in Rome last month that the group is renouncing violence in the struggle for autonomy for Kurds. Last month a Kurdish woman died setting off a bomb near a military garrison that wounded two others. The Turkish army is currently conducting a large-scale operation against the rebels in southeast Turkey and neighboring northern Iraq NTV reported. The army intensified its operations sending in warplanes to bomb rebel hideouts following the downing of a military helicopter by the rebels Friday NTV said. Sixteen soldiers were killed in the crash. Despite Ocalan's call for a cease-fire on Sept. 1 PKK rebels had been carried out close to 200 operations the Germany-based pro-Kurdish news agency DEM said. DEM also claimed that the Turkish forces had burned down 36 villages populated mainly by Kurds in the past three months. The military have in the past been accused of destroying villages that allegedly harbored rebel forces. Close to 37000 people have been killed since Ocalan's group began fighting in 1984. sf-ht-fd APW19981201.0825.txt.body.html APW19981201.0827.txt.body.html