At least 11 Turkish police personnel were killed and 78 injured in a vehicle bombing in Turkey’s Sirnak province on Friday.
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The attack struck the checkpoint some 50 meters (yards) from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly-Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria.
Predominantly-Kurdish Cizre is in Turkey’s Sirnak province and it borders both Syria and Iraq.
Militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, have carried out a string of auto bomb attacks on police and military in recent months.
Early pictures showed that the police building had been completely gutted by the power of the blast, reduced to a shell surrounded by a pile of rubble.
The bomb hit a police station at 6.40 a.m., Xinhua news agency reported.
Since then, more than 600 security personnel have been martyred and more than 7,000 PKK extremists have been killed.
The PKK, which is banned in Turkey, launched its insurgency in 1984, alleging widespread abuse and discrimination against Kurds by Turkish authorities.
Television quoted the health ministry as saying 12 ambulances and two helicopters had been sent to the scene.
The military has conducted several operations and imposed punishing curfews in towns and cities in southeast Turkey over the past year that have claimed civilian lives, including in Cizre, a bastion of PKK support.
Turkey aims to clear its borders of Islamic State and other militant groups to prevent a new flow of migrants and will continue operations until the nation’s security is guaranteed, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Friday. Human rights groups say hundreds of civilians have also been killed.
Kurdish self-rule The Syrian Kurdish militia is closely linked to the PKK, an outlawed group that has waged a conflict for more than 30 years to win self-rule for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, a battle in which tens of thousands of people have died.
Last week Erdogan accused followers of a USA -based Islamic cleric he blames for the July 15 coup attempt of being complicit in attacks by Kurdish militants. The government has blamed the failed coup on the supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen and has embarked on a sweeping crackdown on his followers.
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Also on Thursday (local time), Interior Minister Efkan Ala accused the PKK of attacking a convoy carrying the country’s main opposition party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
