A documentary film on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters has been pulled from the Istanbul Film Festival at the last minute following an intervention by the Turkish culture ministry, organizers and producers said Sunday.

The documentary film "Bakur" ("North") was to have been shown Sunday afternoon in Istanbul but the screening would no longer go ahead, the organizers of the film festival said in a statement.

Pope Francis on Sunday became the first pontiff to publicly utter the word "genocide" to describe Turkey's mass murder of Armenians 100 years ago, following the example of France, Russia and Canada.

Speaking at a mass in Saint Peter's Basilica to mark the centenary of the Ottoman killings of Armenians, the pope quoted a written document signed by John Paul II in 2001, branding the killings as the "first genocide of the 20th century."

Turkey's government and Kurdish militants on Sunday exchanged angry accusations after the most serious clashes this year that threaten to undermine a fragile peace process.

Kurdish militants accused the military of provoking Saturday's violence that according to the Turkish army left five Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels dead and four soldiers wounded.

Pope Francis uttered the word "genocide" on Sunday to describe the mass murder of Armenians 100 years ago, sparking fury from Turkey which slammed the term as "far from historical reality."

In a solemn mass in Saint Peter's Basilica to mark the centenary of the Ottoman killings of Armenians, Francis said the murders were "widely considered 'the first genocide of the 20th century'," quoting a statement signed by Pope John Paul II and the Armenian patriarch in 2001.

Four Turkish troops were wounded Saturday in clashes with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), in a blow to the peace process seeking to end decades of separatist violence.

The army sent armed helicopters, reconnaissance jets and a commando unit to the Agri region in southeastern Turkey where clashes were continuing, the Turkish military said in a statement on its website.

A group of Syrian opposition figures is seeking to form an alternative to the National Coalition body and open negotiations with President Bashar Assad to end their country's conflict.

The "National Syrian Democratic Conference" is expected to take place in Cairo in early May and bring together some 150 opposition figures living in Syria and abroad, organizers say.

A Turkish court on Friday placed under arrest pending trial 17 soldiers charged in a hugely controversial case over the interception last year of a consignment that allegedly contained arms bound for Syria.

The 17 have been charged with membership of a terrorist organization and working on behalf of the "parallel state", common official shorthand for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's arch enemy the U.S.-based preacher Fethullah Gulen.

An experienced war photographer has vowed to fight the Japanese government after being issued a passport that specifically bars him from going to violence-wracked Iraq and Syria.

Yuichi Sugimoto, who has been reporting from conflict zones for 20 years, had his passport confiscated in February after he refused government requests to abandon a planned trip to a Syrian refugee camp.

The Islamic world is at risk of "disintegration" due to the current conflicts in the region between the Sunni and Shiite strands of the Muslim faith, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in comments published Thursday.

Erdogan, who is increasingly touting himself as a leader of the Muslim world, said he would take steps to calm the tensions by meeting Islamic leaders.

Turkish prosecutors on Wednesday called for two prominent journalists who featured Charlie Hebdo's cover with the image of the Prophet Mohammed in their columns to be jailed for four and a half years.

Istanbul's chief public prosecutor has charged Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya with "inciting public hatred" and "insulting religious values" by illustrating their columns with the cartoon, the Hurriyet daily reported.