In the deadliest strike, five soldiers and a village guard were killed when a homemade bomb blew up in the path of a military convoy in the southeastern town of Bitlis on Thursday, Turkish media reported.
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Authorities blamed the attack on the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, which has carried out several similar attacks against police in Turkey’s mainly-Kurdish southeast region.
The United States denounced the failed Turkish coup as a threat against democracy while Turkey is demanding the extradition of the supposed mastermind of the coup, Pennsylvania-based preacher Fethullah Gulen.
A civilian was killed and four soldiers were injured during a bomb attack by the PKK terrorist organization in eastern Turkey’s Van province on Friday, a security source said.
At least 14 people have been killed in total and around 300 wounded, according to various officials.
A large explosion rocked an area near a police station in the eastern Turkish town of Elazig and three police officers were killed, Turkish media reported, hours after a vehicle bomb killed three people elsewhere in the region.
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.
During a search of the home of one of the accused, investigators discovered “religious literature, disks, brochures containing speeches by Fethullah Gulen and other documents”, they said in a statement.
Turkey has accused Europe and the United States of taking a soft stance against the Gulen movement in the wake of the coup, in which the plotters bombed the Turkish parliament, killed more than 200 people and nearly assassinated Erdogan.
Clashes between the PKK and Turkish forces have been ongoing since a peace process crumbled in 2015, bringing an end to a two-year ceasefire.
He said the Turkish security forces have killed at least 182 Kurdish rebels in the weeks following the July 15 failed military coup, insisting that there has been no slackening in the fight against the PKK.
The United States on Thursday condemned “in the strongest terms” the terrorist attacks in southeastern Turkey, and expressed support to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally.
The president referred to advance of Syrian Kurds that seized control of the Syrian town of Manbij from the Islamic State (IS) last week with other US -backed forces. The eight claim they will not receive a fair trial in Turkey, where the authorities have detained tens of thousands of people over the coup, including top generals.
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Amnesty International has reported that it has evidence some of those detained in Istanbul and the capital Ankara have been subjected to torture and rape.
