PKK militants raided the police station in the town of Pozanti, in southern Adana province, late on Thursday, killing two policemen and touching off a gunfight that also killed two rebels, said Gov. Mustafa Buyuk.
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Some of the attackers who were able to escape the police have started searching the militants.
The service, which runs between Iran and Turkey, was hit by a blast from a remotely detonated landmine just after midnight, in an attack blamed on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants, a local gendarme official said on condition of anonymity. The terrorist organization also killed a soldier and injured another last Thursday in the province of Diyarbakır after ambushing them.
Demirtas accuses Erdogan of orchestrating the current security crisis in the hope of calling early elections to secure an outright majority for the ruling party after its lacklustre performance in June 7 polls. He said the rebels were armed with automatic rifles and hand grenades.
But it shifted focus to the PKK following an attack claimed by the rebels that killed two policemen.
After Ankara agreed to open its air bases to the U.S.-led coalition last week following years of reluctance, Turkey and Washington are working on plans to provide air cover for Syrian rebels and sweep Islamic State fighters from a strip of northern Syria along the Turkish border.
Deadly attacks on the security forces blamed on the PKK have become a daily event, raising fears of a return to the dark days at the peak of its separatist insurgency in the 1990s. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since then.
Some 30 Turkish F-16 planes yesterday launched a new wave of strikes against PKK targets in northern Iraq, NTV television said.
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Demirtas, whose party has been a facilitator in negotiations, said Davutoglu’s calls to the PKK to lay down its arms and leave the country were “one-sided and impossible to achieve”. A ceasefire, though fragile, had been holding since March 2013.
