Turkish forces freed a ferry hijacked by a Kurdish rebel, and brought to safety 24 people aboard, ending a 12-hour siege on the boat in the country’s northwest.

Turkish forces freed a ferry hijacked by a Kurdish rebel, and brought to safety 24 people aboard, ending a 12-hour siege on the boat in the country's northwest.

"Soon after the beginning of an operation (by Turkish security forces), the hijacker was captured dead," Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu told NTV private television.
The governor said the hijacker, about 30 years old, was "a member of the terrorist organization", referring to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
He had been carrying explosives, added Mutlu.

The ferry, named the Kartepe, was hijacked around 1600 GMT Friday in the sea of Marmara, where PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is jailed on an island.
Transport Minister Binali Yildirim earlier spoke of four or five hijackers, but Mutlu said there was only one.
All the passengers and crew were safe, the governor added, as television footage showed them being evacuated with boats.

Security forces under the command of Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin boarded the ferry off the coast of Silivri, west of Istanbul around 0335 GMT on Saturday.
Yildirim said 18 passengers, five of them women, four crew and two interns were aboard the vessel, which was making its normal route in the northern Marmara sea when it was seized.

The island of Imrali, where Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader, is held, is about 120 kilometres (75 miles) southwest of the hijacking spot. Turkish media say the hijacker was assumed to be heading for the island.
"Measures were boosted around the island of Imrali where PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has not been allowed to meet with his lawyers for months, is being held," said the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency.

Clashes between the PKK and the army have escalated since mid-2011.