There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but Turkey’s state run Anadolu Agency blamed the attack on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), according to the Reuters news agency.
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The attack struck the checkpoint 50 meters (yards) from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly-Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria.
Large plumes of smoke billowed from the attack site, footage on Turkish televisions showed.
“We will give those vile [attackers] the answer they deserve”, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told a news conference in Istanbul on Friday.
Kuwait’s official news agency KUNA reported that Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah had sent a note of condolence to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he strongly condemned the terrorist attack targeting “innocent people” and contradicts with “all humanitarian values and doctrines of divine religions”.
World leaders continued to voice condemnations for a recent PKK terrorist attack Friday that martyred almost a dozen police officers in southeastern Turkey.
Cizre, a majority Kurdish town, has been badly hit by renewed violence between the PKK and government forces since the collapse of a ceasefire past year. Hundreds of security force members, militants and even civilians have been killed since.
Cizre was placed under 24-hour curfew for several weeks earlier this year as the security forces launched operations to root out Kurdish militants. Rights groups say hundreds of civilians have also been killed in the clashes.
Ankara sees Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters as an extension of the PKK.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The attacks on police come as the country is still reeling from a violent coup attempt on July 15 that killed at least 270 people.
“The action was definitively not aimed at the CHP and Kemal Kilicdaroglu”, a statement said. It said two of the soldiers are in critical condition and the Turkish military is seeking to capture the militants. Doing so may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.
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In a statement on its website, the PKK confirmed that it carried out an action in Cizre against police, but said more information would only be made available on Saturday.
