The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants claimed responsibility for a vehicle bomb attack that killed 11 Turkish police officers and wounded 78 people in Turkey’s southern province of Sirnak earlier on Friday.
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The attack struck the checkpoint 50 metres (yards) from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly-Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria.
The attack was reportedly executed by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) using a truck bomb in the Cizre district of the southeastern province of Şırnak early on 26 August.
A statement from the French Foreign Ministry denounced the attack and said: “The French authorities again express their solidarity with the Turkish authorities and people in the face of terrorism”.
“We will give all kinds of necessary response to these villains who targeted the fellowship and unity of 79 million people”, Yildirim said.
Over the past year, the PKK has executed a number of attacks after the failure of a ceasefire between the party and the Turkish government.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
On Wednesday, pro-Turkish Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish tanks and fighter jets, seized the border town of Jarabulus on which the YPG appeared to have designs.
Anadolu quoted security sources as saying the military would continue to intervene against the Kurdish fighters until they began to retreat.
The group said the attack was in retaliation for the “continued isolation” of its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan and the “lack of information” about his whereabouts.
A precarious 2 1/2 -year cease-fire between Turkey and the PKK collapsed last summer.
At the same time, Turkey has been afflicted by deadly attacks blamed on Islamic State militants, including a suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding in southeast Turkey last week that killed 54 people and an attack on Istanbul’s main airport in June that killed 44 people.
The bombing by the roadblock outside a police headquarters, the latest in a string of explosions in the mostly Kurdish southeast of the country, also injured 75 security force members and three civilians, according to a statement from the local governor.
The Dogan news agency said a village guard was also killed and another soldier was wounded when clashes erupted in the rural areas of Nazar village in the same area.
Ankara considers the YPG, which has links to the PKK, as a terror group bent on carving out an autonomous Kurdish region on Turkey’s border. Some 40,000 people have been killed since the conflict started in 1984.
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The country is still recovering from last month’s failed coup attempt that killed about 270 people, which government believes was influenced by US -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
