The explosion killed two police officers and wounded 22 people in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep in one of three attacks on security forces on Sunday.
Advertisement
Security officers and firefighters work moments after an explosion outside the Police headquarters in Gaziantep.
Gov. Ali Yerlikaya of Gaziantep province said those injured in the blast at the entrance of the police station include at least nine policemen.
Three soldiers and one police officer have been killed in Turkey’s south-east in suspected attacks by Kurdish militants.
The attack comes with Turkey on edge after two deadly attacks in Istanbul this year blamed on IS jihadists and a pair of attacks in Ankara that were claimed by Kurdish militants and killed dozens.
Last December, Turkish counter-terrorism units revealed that members of ISIL prepared suicide-bomb vests and other materials in a depot in the city for use in the double suicide bomb attack that killed 102 people in Ankara on October 10, 2015.
Gaziantep, which borders Islamic State-held Syrian territory, is home to a large Syrian refugee population and there have been several police raids on suspected Islamic State militants there over the past months.
Two cars entered the area with assailants firing automatic weapons and police responding to the attack, daily Hurriyet reported.
In a separate attack Sunday, eight people were wounded after four rockets hit Kilis, another town near the Syrian border, the Anadolu Agency reported.
A female suicide bomber on Wednesday blew herself up in the former Ottoman capital of Bursa, south of Istanbul.
A local official gave a higher toll, saying one soldier was killed and 26 others, including civilians, were wounded in the attack.
According to reports by Ankara, the PKK regularly conducts terrorist attacks against Turkish police and law enforcement.
Advertisement
Protests planned to highlight the violence taking place in the Syrian city of Aleppo, just 100km away over the border, were cancelled in the aftermath of the violence.
