Over 70 people were wounded in a truck bomb attack on police headquarters in the town of Cizre in Sirnak province in the southeast of Turkey, according to Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag.
Advertisement
Reportedly, the Kurdish rebels have detonated a auto bomb at an outpost in Sirnak province, on the Syria border killing and injuring several people.
Anadolu Agency said the attack on Friday targeted a checkpoint some 50 yards away from a police station in the town of Cizre, in Sirnak province.
Turkish police and firefighters parked near the damaged police headquarters in Cizre.
Militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, have carried out a string of auto bomb attacks on police and military in recent months after violence broke out between the two following the collapse of a fragile peace process.
Violence between the PKK and the security forces resumed last year, after the collapse the two-year peace process in July.
The government has blamed the PKK for a series of attacks during August in the southeast. Hundreds of security force members, militants and even civilians have been killed since.
The local governor’s office confirmed the death toll and said three of the injured were civilians.
The latest attack comes two days after Turkish forces launched an unprecedented offensive in neighbouring Syria which the authorities say is aimed both at jihadists and Syrian Kurdish militia. The three-story police station was gutted from the powerful explosion.
Ankara sees the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia as terror groups bent on carving out an autonomous region in Syria and acting as the Syrian branch of the PKK.
This is the aftermath of a bombing that killed at least 11 police officers and injured dozens of people in Turkey.
Advertisement
On Thursday Interior Minister Efkan Ala accused the group of attacking a convoy carrying the main opposition party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
