Also on Thursday, Interior Minister Efkan Ala accused the PKK of attacking a convoy carrying the country’s main opposition party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The group has carried out a string of auto bomb attacks on police and military in recent months.
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Eight Turkish police officers were killed and 45 more people injured on Friday when a vehicle bomb blamed on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants exploded outside a police building in the southeast of the country.
It said the blast caused severe damage to the police station.
Photographs broadcast by private channel NTV showed a large three-storey building reduced to its concrete shell, with no walls or windows, and surrounded by grey rubble. It said the blast had been carried out by the PKK.
“This is one of a string of attacks against security forces who have hit back extremely hard in the past”.
Over 600 members of Turkish security forces and thousands of PKK members have been killed in confrontations inside Turkey and in northern Iraq since July of 2015, and Turkish forces have killed over 7000 PKK militants, local media figured.
Turkey sent tanks across the Syrian border following weeks of deadly attacks by the PKK and the Islamic State group. In a year of bloody terrorist attacks in Turkey, the wedding bombing ranks among the worst, with the death toll surpassing the 44 killed in a June attack on the Ataturk Airport.
Turkey on Friday vowed to retaliate.
The attack comes as the Turkish regime battles not only the PKK, but also the Sunni Islamist terror group ISIS. More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the rebels took up arms in Turkey in 1984.
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Turkey’s PKK conflict shows no sign of abating, says the BBC’s Mark Lowen, and the government has ruled out any negotiations until the group completely disarms.
