PKK fighters are due to begin disarming at a ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan today, two months after Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.

The disarmament ceremony marks a turning point in the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) transition from armed insurgency to democratic politics as part of a broader effort to end one of the region's longest conflicts.

Founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK took up arms in 1984, launching a series of bloody attacks on Turkish territory that sparked a conflict that claimed more than 40,000 lives, AFP reported.

But more than four decades later, the PKK announced its disbandment in May. It said it would continue the democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with the historic call of Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence in Turkey since 1999.

The ceremony is due to take place in the morning at an undisclosed location in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan - where most PKK fighters have been hiding for the past ten years - near the northeastern city of Sulaymaniyah.

Although details of the ceremony were limited, a PKK source said about 30 fighters would destroy their weapons and then return to the mountains.

"As a goodwill gesture, a number of PKK fighters who have been involved in fighting with Turkish forces in recent years will destroy or burn their weapons in a ceremony," a PKK commander said on July 1, speaking on condition of anonymity. | BGNES