PARIS — 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.

Turkey's Anadolu news agency identified one of the victims as Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Turkey and its Western allies, including the United States and the European Union, consider the group a terrorist organization.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who visited the pro-Kurdish center in Paris where the bodies were found, said the deaths were "without doubt an execution." He called it a "totally intolerable act."