Three Kurdish women, including one of the founders of a militant group battling Turkish troops since 1984, were "executed" at a Kurdish center in Paris, the interior minister said Thursday.
The news prompted angry crowds of Kurds to flood into the area. French interior minister Manuel Valls visited the scene at the Information Centre for Kurdistan, hours after police and firefighters found the bodies. He told French TV the deaths were "without doubt an execution".
The fact that one of the women is a founding member of the Kurdish Workers' Party, or PKK - a group viewed by Turkey, the United States and others as a terror organization - has led to heightened speculation.
The PKK, a pan-Kurdish nationalist movement, is best known internationally for the guerrilla war it has fought for nearly three decades against the government of Turkey, a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives.
Kurds have accused Turkey for the slayings, while Turkish officials have suggested the killings may be part of an internal feud or an attempt to derail the talks.
The three women were alone in the center in an area where many Kurds live beginning about midday Wednesday, said Leon Edart, the facility's director. When someone tried unsuccessfully to contact them later, people broke through the door after seeing bloodstains on it, discovering the bodies.
