Two vehicle bombings targeted police stations in Turkey, killing a number of people and wounding hundreds, officials said Thursday.
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In Van province, further east, two police officers and one civilian were killed and 73 people were wounded late on Wednesday when a auto bomb exploded near a police station, the local governor’s office said in a statement.
At least 73 other people, including 53 civilians and 20 police officers were wounded, officials said.
Government officials said all three attacks were carried out by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known in Turkey as the PKK, a group that has previously targeted security forces.
The auto bomb killed 14 people and wounded more than 220 others in the province of Van. Officials said earlier 146 people were wounded and 14 of them were in serious condition.
Istanbul: Turkish police launched a vast operation yesterday against businesses suspected of financing US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, accused of masterminding last months attempted coup.
In a separate attack in Libya, Islamic State suicide bombers detonated two cars bombs that killed at least 10 of Libya’s pro-government forces, authorities said.
Video footage showed a plume of black smoke rising above the city after the blast, which uprooted trees and gouged a large crater outside the police complex, located on a busy thoroughfare in the city of 420,000 people.
They say Turkish operations have killed more than 7,000 militants in Turkey and northern Iraq.
“This nation will never surrender to any terrorist organisation”, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Thursday as he visited the scene of one of the bombings.
He told reporters there both the PKK and the Gulen movement were directed by the same “intelligence” intent on causing Turkey harm, without elaborating.
The southeast has been scorched by violence since a 2-1/2-year ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July last year.
Rights groups say about 400 civilians have also been killed.
Yildirim vowed to fight the PKK until it is “eliminated”.
More than 40,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms in 1984 in a separatist rebellion against the Turkish state.
Amnesty International also condemned the vehicle bombings, which it labeled as “the latest in a series of reckless and brutal attacks”.
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“The terrorist organization won’t find the right to live anywhere”.
