Since then, over 600 security personnel, including troops, police officers and village guards have been martyred and more than 7,000 PKK terrorists killed or neutralized in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.
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Early on Thursday, another vehicle bombing hit police headquarters in the eastern city of Elazig.
“Among the 71 injured, three of them are in a serious condition and 17 are police officers”, Soganda said, adding that a child and a police officer were among the dead.
Yildirim blamed the PKK for the attack. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and the United States. “There is no doubt about it”, he told reporters.
Turkey was already reeling from a deadly attack hours earlier when a auto bomb killed at least three people and wounded scores in the southeast city of Van, bringing the total death toll to at least nine. Three police officers were killed and 217 people were wounded, 85 of them police officers, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said.
Police and officials surround the scene of a bomb blast in Kiziltepe, Turkey August 10, 2016.
Clashes between the Kurdistan worker’s party, or PKK, and Turksih forces have been ongoing since a peace process crumbled in 2015.
But this hasn’t contained the pro-Kurdish political party which the Turkish authorities say supports reports the BBC’s Turkey correspondent Mark Lowen, the PKK.
Tens of thousands have been killed in the conflict.
Anadolu said the operations have killed more than 7,000 militants in Turkey and northern Iraq but the toll can not be independently verified.
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Despite Van being a largely Kurdish community, in the lack of claims for the attack, the Van governor’s office said the PKK was responsible.
