At least three police officers were killed and scores more people wounded in a auto bombing that hit a police headquarters in the eastern city of Elazig early Thursday.
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Two vehicle bombings targeted police stations in Turkey, killing at least six people and wounding 219 others.
“The PKK resumed its long-running conflict against the Turkish military in July 2015, after more than two years of reconciliation talks broke down”.
First, a village guard was killed and a soldier was wounded in clashes between security forces and PKK militants in the village of Nazar, state news agency Anadolu reported.
Addressing a group of Islamic civil society members on Thursday, Erdogan said some 3,000 other Kurdish militants also have been detained, insisting that there has been no slackening in Turkey’s fight against the rebel group as it deals with the aftermath of the failed coup.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his turn claimed, that the recent PKK attacks were caused by the followers of Fethullah Gulen, the USA -based preacher, who was blamed by Turkey officials to be the main suspect behind the July 15 coup attempt. Offices in the police station were left in ruins and filled with smoke after the bomb exploded in front of the complex, destroying part of the facade, CNN Turk footage showed.
The third attack was a roadside blast targeted a military automobile carrying soldiers in the southeast of the country.
At least eight people were killed in two attacks on police vehicles in nearby Diyarbakir and Kiziltepe last week. At least 14 of them were in serious condition.
Biden is scheduled to visit North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey on August 24, a diplomatic move that follows Turkish officials’ repeated requests for extradition or deportation of Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told foreign media representatives in Istanbul on Saturday that Turkey wants the United States to speed up procedures for extraditing Gulen.
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 (Gulen movement) has lost its assertiveness and has handed over the duty to the (PKK)”, Yildirim said. “When one’s duty ends, the other takes up the duty”.
Yildirim blamed the PKK for the attack.
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“The United States has every kind of information on the incidents this terror organization and its leader have been involved in”, Yildirim added.
