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Kurdish group claims Ankara auto bomb attack that killed 37

The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

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The TAK, which on Thursday claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack that killed 37 people in Ankara, is a militant Kurdish nationalist faction established in 2005.

More than 200 people have died in five suicide bombings in Turkey since July that were blamed either on the Kurdish rebels or IS.

Turkey, which faces multiple security threats, is battling both IS and Kurdish militants.

In addition to the German embassy in Ankara, the German school in Ankara and the German consulate in Istanbul were also to remain closed on Thursday.

A court meanwhile sent three academics to jail on Tuesday pending trial on charges of “terrorist propaganda” after they publicly read a declaration reiterating a call to end military operations in the mainly Kurdish southeast.

The explosion in Guvenpark area of the Kizilay commercial, administrative, and transport hub district of Ankara did not target civilians said the TAK statement.

According to the interior ministry, the main perpetrator of Sunday’s suicide bomb attack was a female university student in her mid-20s who joined the Kurdish militant group in 2013 and left to fight in northern Syria in December of that year.

In the immediate aftermath of the latest bombing, the Turkish authorities pointed the finger at the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), against which Ankara has waged a relentless assault since late last year after a shaky two-year truce collapsed. Scores of civilians have died in the crossfire, and tens of thousands have been displaced by the ongoing violence.

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The PKK launched a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984 for greater autonomy for Kurds, a conflict that has claimed some 40,000 lives and is listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. Prosecutors have accused the leading members of the People’s Democratic Party, parliament’s third largest, of sedition for voicing support for Kurdish self-rule.

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