Sulaymaniyah (Iraq), 11 July (LaPresse/AP) – The long-awaited symbolic ceremony took place in northern Iraq, in which fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the Kurdish separatist group that has been waging a guerrilla war in Turkey for decades, began to lay down their arms, the first concrete step towards the disarmament promised as part of a peace process. In May, the PKK announced that it would disband and renounce armed conflict, ending four decades of hostilities. The move came after PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned since 1999 on an island near Istanbul, urged his group to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm. The ceremony took place in the mountains outside the city of Sulaymaniyah, in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. It is unclear how many fighters attended today's ceremony. Officials had previously said the number could be in the low dozens.